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A STEPDAUGHTER OF 
THE PRAIRIE 



THE MACMILLAN COMPANY 

NEW YORK • BOSTON • CHICAGO 
DALLAS • ATLANTA • SAN FRANCISCO 

MACMILLAN & CO., Limited 

LONDON • BOMBAY • CALCUTTA 
MELBOURNE 

THE MACMILLAN CO. OP CANADA, Ltd. 

TORONTO 



A STEPDAUGHTER OF 
THE PRAIRIE 



BY 

MARGARET LYNN 



Jleto gorfe 

THE MACMILLAN COMPANY 

1914 






Copyright, 1911, 1912, 1913, 1914 
By THE ATLANTIC MONTHLY 

Copyright, 1914 
By THE MACMILLAN COMPANY 



Set up and electrotyped. Published May, 1914. 



MAY -7 ISM 

©CI.A369981 



TO 

PRAIRIE LOVERS EVERYWHERE 

AND ESPECIALLY 

TO THOSE WHOSE HAPPY REMINISCENCES 

HAVE FURNISHED MATERIAL 

FOR THESE SKETCHES 



CONTENTS 



PAGE 



A Stepdaughter of the Prairie .... 1 

A Prairie Caravansary 20 

The Urban Test .52 

My Book and Heart 80 

The Vanity of Romance 106 

A Green Thought 132 

The Path of Learning 160 

The Youngest Daughter of Zelophehad . . . 188 

The Scrap-book 212 

Ivy of the Negatives 231 

A Daughter of the Prairik 259 



711 



With the exception of The Scrap-books and 
A Daughter of the Prairie, all these sketches 
have appeared in The Atlantic Monthly. 
Acknowledgments are due the Atlantic 
Monthly Company for kind permission to 
republish them. 



A STEPDAUGHTER OF 
THE PRAIRIE 



A STEPDAUGHTER OF THE 
PRAIRIE 

Far away on the almost bare line of the prai- 
rie horizon a group of trees used to show. 
There was a tall one, and a short one, and then 
a tallish crooked one and another short one. 
And to my childish eyes they spelled 1-i-f-e, as 
plainly as any word in my reader was spelled. 
They were the point that most fascinated me as 
I knelt at the upstairs window, with my elbows 
on the sill and my chin on my folded arms. I 
don't know when I first noticed them, for they 
had been there always, so far as I could remem- 
ber, a scanty little bit of fringe on a horizon 
that was generally clear and bare. There were 
tips of other woods farther to the south, woods 
that were slightly known to me ; but this group 
of trees at the very limit of seeing appeared to 
lie beyond the knowledge of anyone. Even on 
the afternoons when I was allowed to go with 

1 



% A STEPDAUGHTER OF THE PRAIRIE 

my father on some long ride, and we drove and 
drove and drove, we never came in sight of it. 
Yet, when I next went upstairs and looked from 
the window, there it stood against the sky. 

I had no sense of making an allegory out of 
it. At that age, to the fairy-tale-fed child, the 
line between allegory and reality is scarcely 
perceptible, anyway. The Word on the horizon 
was only a matter of course to me. An older 
person, had it occurred to me to mention the 
matter, would perhaps have seen something 
significant, even worthy of sentimental remark, 
in the child's spelling out life on her far hori- 
zon. But to me, mystery as it was, it was also 
a matter of fact; there it stood, and that was 
all. Yet it was also a romance, a sort of un- 
formulated promise. It was related to the far 
distant, to the remote in time, to the thing that 
was some day to be known. So I rested my 
chin on my little arms and watched. 

I suppose the fact that the trees were evi- 
dently big and old — ours were still young and 
small — and perhaps a part of some woods, was 
their greatest interest to me. For no one can 
picture what the woods mean to the prairie 



A STEPDAUGHTER OF THE PRAIRIE 8 

child. They are a glimpse of dream-things, an 
illustration of poems read, a mystery of unde- 
fined possibilities. To pass through our scant 
bits of woods, even, was an excursion into a 
strange world. From places on the road to 
town we could see pieces of timber. And on 
some blessed occasions when a muddy hollow 
was impassable or when the Howell bridge, the 
impermanent structure of a prairie country, 
was out, we went around through the Crossley 
woods. That was an experience ! The depth of 
greenness — the prairie had nothing like it. I 
think that my eyes were born tired of the prai- 
rie, ungrateful little soul that I was. 

And the summer shadows in the woods were 
marvelous. The shadow of the prairie was that 
of a passing cloud, or the square shade of some 
building, deepest at noonday. But the green 
depth of the woods' shadows, the softly moving 
light and shade, were a wonderful thing. To 
me these trips put all probability on a new 
basis. Out on the bare prairie, under the shin- 
ing sun, stories were stories, even the dearest 
of them inventions. But in these shady depths, 
where my eyes were led on from green space 



4 A STEPDAUGHTER OF THE PRAIRIE 

through green space to a final remote dimness, 
anything might be true. Fiction and tradition 
took on a reality that the glaring openness 
would not allow. Things that were different 
might happen in a wood. I could not help ex- 
pecting a new experience. But it never came; 
we passed out of the timber to the prairie 
again. 

But at least expectation had been stirred. 
The possibility that something might happen 
seemed nearer. For Romance was always just 
around the corner, or just a little way ahead. 
But out on the prairie how could one overtake 
it? Where could the unknown lurk in that 
great open? The woods seemed to put me 
nearer to the world on whose borders I always 
hovered, the world of stories and poems, the 
world of books in general. The whole business 
of life in those first reading years was to dis- 
cover in the world of actual events enough that 
was bookish to reconcile me to being a real 
child and not one in a story. For the most 
part, aside from play, which was a thing in 
itself and had a sane importance of its own, the 
realities of life were those that had their coun- 



A STEPDAUGHTER OF THE PRAIRIE 5 

terpart in books. Whatever I found in read- 
ing, especially in poetry, I craved for my own 
experience. 

There is no bookishness like that of a child- 
ish reader, and there is no romanticism like 
that of a child. For good or ill, I was steeped 
in both. But the two things, books and the visi- 
ble world that the sun shone in and the prairie 
spread out in, were far apart and, according to 
my lights, incompatible. I always had a suspi- 
cion of a distinct line between literature and 
life, at least life as I knew it, far out in the Mis- 
souri valley. Who had ever heard of the Mis- 
souri in a novel or a poem! No essays on 
Literature and Life had then enlightened me as 
to their relation; I didn't know that they had 
any. I wished that life could be translated into 
terms of literature, but so far as I could see I 
had to do it myself if it was to be done. 

One must admit that it was little less than 
tragic to read of things that one could not 
know, and to live among things that had never 
been thought worth putting into a book. What 
did it avail to read of forests and crags and 
waterfalls and castles and blue seas, when I 



6 A STEPDAUGHTER OF THE PRAIRIE 

could know only barbed-wire fences and frame 
buildings and prairie grass! 

Of course there were some elements of our 
living in which I discovered resemblances to 
what I had found in my reading, and I was al- 
ways alert to these things, however small. I 
admired my pretty young-lady sister, for in- 
stance, but I admired her most when she put on 
the garments of romance ; when she wore a filmy 
white muslin with blue ribbons, a costume 
stamped with the novelist's approval from the 
earliest times ; or, better still, a velvet hat with 
a long plume sweeping down over her hair. 
For some reason I cannot explain — possibly 
because I knew him then better than I do now 
— I associated her appearance then with that 
of some of Scott's heroines. She rose in my 
estimation — as did anyone else — whenever she 
managed, however unconsciously, to link her- 
self with romance. When I found after a time, 
as I grew sophisticated, that she was capable 
of exciting those feelings in the masculine 
breast that are depicted with some care in nov- 
els, especially in those which were forbidden 
and which I was obliged to read by snatches and 



A STEPDAUGHTER OF THE PRAIRIE 7 

in inconvenient places, I gave her my unquali- 
fied approval for all time. 

As I have said, there is no bookishness like 
that of a small bookworm. In my own little 
self I did try to make a point of contact be- 
tween what I read and what I saw. I wished 
that I dared to use the language of books. I 
did occasionally indulge in the joy of borrowing 
a literary phrase. To the grown-ups who heard 
it, it was doubtless a bit of precocious pedantry 
or an effort to show off. I sometimes saw vis- 
itors smile at one another, and with sudden 
amused interest try to draw me out; and in 
stammering prosaic embarrassment I shrank 
away, no literary fluency left. In reality I was 
not showing off. I could not resist the shy deli- 
cious pleasure of making my own a phrase 
from one of our yellow-leaved books of poetry. 
It linked reality with romance. In some way it 
seemed to make me free of the world of folk in 
books, whose company I craved. The elders 
never guessed the tremor with which I ven- 
tured on my phrase from Tennyson or Lowell, 
though I might have been rolling it under my 
tongue for half an hour. But it would not do, 



8 A STEPDAUGHTER OF THE PRAIRIE 

I saw, to use the sacred language lightly before 
unproved hearers, so I generally reserved it 
for my little talkings to myself. I had my 
small code of phrases for my private purposes, 
and a list of expletives rich but amazing. They 
were gleaned all the way from Shakespeare to 
Scott; modern writers are pitifully meager in 
expletives. 

But that was after all a thin delight. And 
to live in one kind of country and feed on the 
literature of another kind of country is to put 
one all awry. Why was there no literature of 
the prairie? Whatever there was did not come 
to my hands, and I went on trying to translate 
the phenomena of the Missouri valley into 
terms of other-land poetry. But even such 
things as we had, appeared in unrecognizable 
guise. We had wild flowers in abundance, but 
unnamed. And what are botanical names to a 
child who wants to find foxglove and heather 
and bluebells and Wordsworth's daffodils and 
Burns 's daisy? We — I was not alone in this 
quest — wanted names that might have come out 
of a book. So we traced imagined resem- 
blances, and with slight encouragement from 



A STEPDAUGHTER OF THE PRAIRIE 9 

our elders — they came from back east where 
well-established flowers grow — named plants 
where we could. 

There was a ruffly yellow flower with a vague 
pretty odor, which we forced the name prim- 
rose upon. For the primrose was yellow, in 
Wordsworth at least, and some agreeable vis- 
itor had said that this might be a primrose. 
We invented spurious pseudo-poetic names, 
trying to pretend that they were as good as the 
names we read. There was a pink flower of 
good intentions but no faithfulness, which re- 
tired at the approach of the sun, and which we 
christened "morning beauty." We had other 
attempts at ready-made folk names, crude and 
imitative, but I have forgotten them. What a 
pity the prairie did not last long enough to fix 
itself and the things that belonged to it in a 
sort of folk phrases! At least we ought to 
have had enough flower lore at our command 
to give us the sweet real names that may have 
belonged to its blossoms or their relatives in 
other lands. When we did learn such a name 
for some half-despised flower, how the plant 
leaped to honor and took on a halo of merit! 



10 A STEPDAUGHTER OF THE PRAIRIE 

Some elder occasionally went with us to the 
woods, some teacher, perhaps, hungry for her 
own far-away trees, and we found that we 
really had a genuine sweet-william and dog- 
tooth violet and Jack-in-the-pulpit and May 
apple, and even a rare diffident yellow violet. 
They were no more beautiful than our gay, 
nameless flowers of the open, but they grew in 
the woods and they had names with an atmos- 
phere to them. In our eternal quest for names, 
some learned visitor — for we had many a vis- 
itor of every kind — would give us crisp, scien- 
tific terms loaded with consonants. But how 
could one love a flower by a botanical name f 

As days went by, however, even before it was 
time for me to be taken from the little country 
school and sent east to learn other things, some 
conditions had changed. Chance seeds of dif- 
ferent flowers and grasses came floating west. 
In a neighbor's field were real daisies — we did 
not know then that they were not Burns 's — 
brought in the seed with which the field was 
sown, most unwelcome to the farmer, but wor- 
shiped by us. Our own groves, planted before 
we children were born, were growing up and 



A STEPDAUGHTER OF THE PRAIRIE 11 

already served for the hundred purposes to 
which children can put trees. But the ones 
most generous in their growth and kindest in 
their service to us we regarded with ungrate- 
ful contempt. Who had ever heard of a Cot- 
tonwood in a book? The box-elder was dis- 
tinctly unliterary. The fact that these trees 
had been quickest and most gracious in re- 
deeming new homes from bareness was noth- 
ing to us. Even the maple was less valuable 
when we learned that it was not the sugar- 
maple, and that no matter how long we waited 
we. could never have a sugaring-off. The trees 
we were most eager for came on slowly. It 
seemed as if the oaks would never have acorns. 
They did come at last, and we were able to sat- 
isfy ourselves that they were not edible, either 
green or ripe, and to fit our pinky fingers into 
the velvety little thimbles of them, the softest, 
warmest little cups in the world. 

Our grove was an experimental one, as a 
grove in a new country must be, and held all 
sorts of things, which we made our own one 
by one. There were slender white birches, to 
become beautiful trees in time, from which we 



12 A STEPDAUGHTER OF THE PRAIRIE 

stripped bits of young bark. It was quite use- 
less, of course, a flimsy, papery stuff, but we 
pretended to find use for it, as we bad read of 
others doing. There were handsome young 
chestnut trees, bravely trying to adapt them- 
selves to their land of exile. The leaves were 
fine for making dresses and hats, and we spent 
long July afternoons bedizened like young 
dryads. There were so many things to do and 
to investigate in the earlier months that it was 
midsummer before we reached this amusement. 
But we watched year by year for the fruit of 
the tree. And at last, when the first ones came, 
we carried them proudly to school to exhibit 
them for the wonderment of the other pupils, 
and to apply them surreptitiously to the natu- 
ral uses of a chestnut burr. 

One spring day, in the dimmest part of the 
maple grove, we found a tiny fern-head com- 
ing up from a scanty bed of moss. We watched 
it for days, consulting at intervals the pictures 
of ferns in the encyclopedia, and at last, when 
hope trembled on the brink of certainty, we sol- 
emnly led our mother out to identify it. Was 
it really a fern or only a weed that looked like 



A STEPDAUGHTER OF THE PRAIRIE 13 

a fern? No sacred oak was ever approached 
with more careful reverence. Our mother, an 
exile from her own forest country, talked of 
bracken shoulder-high and rich moss on old 
gray stones or broad tree stumps. We used to 
draw in our breath at the wanton riches of 
fallen trees and stumps. Big trees, to cut 
down ! We viewed our mother enviously. But 
our little frond was something. It drew as 
great ecstasy from our little hearts as a 
bracken-covered hillside has ever done. We 
saw the bracken in epitome, and dreamed of 
conventicles and royal fugitives. 

How I hoarded my little borrowings from the 
actual to enrich the ideal! A neighbor had a 
stake-and-rider fence. No doubt he was a poor 
footless sort of farmer or he would never, in 
that country, have had one — where all good 
farmers had barbed-wire, or, at best, rail 
fences. My father had some hedges, and I was 
proud of them. They were not hawthorn, but 
one must be thankful for what gifts fate 
brings, and I felt some distinction in their 
smooth, genteel lines. But that Virginia rail 
fence — I coveted its irregular convolutions and 



14 A STEPDAUGHTER OF THE PRAIRIE 

deep angles, where the plough never went and 
where almost anything might grow. Whether 
it was an older place than onrs or a worse- 
cared-for one, I don't know. But, if the cause 
were bad farming, it had a reward out of pro- 
portion, in my estimation; for the deep fence 
corners held a tangle wonderful to investigate, 
of wild grape and pokeberry and elderberry 
and an ivy the leaves of which must be counted 
to see if it were poison. They either should or 
should not be the same as the number of my 
fingers; but I never could remember which it 
was and had to leave its pink tips of tender 
new leaves unplucked. There were new little 
maples and box-elders, where the rails had 
stopped the flight of the winged seeds from the 
small grove about the house. There were tiny 
elms with their exquisite little leaves. No 
beauty of form I have ever found has given me 
more complete satisfaction than did the perfect 
lines and notches of those baby leaves. There 
were other plants that I never learned to know. 
How much better it would have been had all 
fields had a border like this, ornamental and 
satisfying, instead of the baldness of a wire 



A STEPDAUGHTER OF THE PRAIRIE 15 

fence. The possession of it gave the O'Brion 
children an eminence that, while I knew it was 
factitious, I could not help recognizing. 

On our part we had a stream, such as it was. 
The muddy little creek — we called it crick — was 
to me a brook, secretly. Poor little creek! It 
did to wade in and to get muddy in, but that 
was all. It had no trout, no ripples over 
stones, no grassy banks. It ran through a 
cornfield and a bit of scanty pasture where its 
banks were trodden by the feet of cattle; and 
it did not babble as it flowed. Try as I might, I 
could not connect it with Tennyson or Jean In- 
gelow. But I could at least call it a brook to 
myself. I had other names of secret applica- 
tion. In the spring the dull little stream used 
to overflow its banks. Then the word brought 
to the house by one of the men would be, ' ' The 
crick's out." But to myself I said freshet, and 
I suppose I was the only one in the whole sec- 
tion to use the old word. 

There was an odd little hollow on the hillside 
above the brook. It was an unromantic spot 
enough, treeless, distinguished only by its dim- 
ple-like contour. But I called it a dell, or in 



16 A STEPDAUGHTER OF THE PRAIRIE 

intenser moments a dingle or, when I was 
thinking largely, a glen, and used to make a 
point to cross it. This was partly because I 
sometimes found bits of pebbles in the cup of 
the hollow, and any stone indigenous to the 
country was a treasure trove. I called the little 
level place below the hollow a glade, and the 
hillside a brae, and the open hill-top a moor or 
heath. Had I used the dictionary more freely 
I might have applied more terms, but I did not 
know what a wold or a tarn or a down was, 
and, lazily, kept them in reserve, fine as they 
sounded. My private vocabulary, as can be 
seen, was largely Tennysonian, and I loved an 
archaism, as something remote from the prac- 
tical. Whatever excursions I made into other 
poets, Tennyson was, first and last, my dear 
delight. My feet were turned over and oft, by 
the guardians of my reading, into the easy 
paths of American poetry. I found due pleas- 
ure in them, but it was always tempered by a 
sort of resentment that, though American, their 
country was not my country. For New Eng- 
land was farther away than Old England, and 
I always went back to Tennyson. I used to sit 



A STEPDAUGHTER OF THE PRAIRIE 17 

in the dingle in bald sunlight and listen to such 
unpretentious noise as the creek made, and 
chant to myself, "How sweet it were, hearing 
the downward stream!" 

The beauty of the prairie is not of the sort 
that a child perceives. The bigness of it, for 
instance, I had been used to all my life, and I 
can't remember that in those earlier days it 
conveyed any sense of expansiveness to me. In 
our long drives over it — interminably long they 
seemed once! — my chief recollection is of 
greenness and tiredness, a long succession of 
rolling hills and hollows, and a little girl so 
weary of sitting up on a seat and watching the 
horses go on and on. I thought the prairie was 
just green grass in summer and dry grass in 
winter. Children are not usually awake to 
shadings and modifications of color. The coral 
pink at the roots of the dried prairie grass, 
the opal tints of the summer mists in the early 
morning, I did not discover until I had reached 
a stage of greater alertness. 

And the prairie was not suggestive to me at 
this early time. Looking back now, I guess 
that it was because it did not hint at the un- 



18 A STEPDAUGHTER OF THE PRAIRIE 

known. It should have, of course, but it did 
not. It did not carry me away and away to 
new possibilities. I knew that beyond these 
grass-covered hills there lay others and then 
others — and that was all there was to it. When 
I saw it face to face I seemed to know it all — 
and who wants to know all about anything! 
This was not only because I was a book- stuffed 
little prig, as I suppose I was. I had imagina- 
tion of a sort, as it seems to me now, when I 
recall my pleasure in certain things: in the 
dim, hovering suggestiveness of twilight and 
the unanalyzable reverie it put me into; in 
the half-heard sounds of mid-afternoon in the 
orchard; in the bend of the young trees in a 
storm at night, when I slipped from bed to 
watch them in the flashes of lightning. There 
was a white pine near my window, l ' an exile in 
a stoneless land," that responded to the rush 
of the western wind with a beautiful bend and 
swing. But when in the broad daylight I 
looked out on the green hills I, in those earlier 
days, saw no changing colors, none of the ex- 
quisite variety of view that must have been 
there. I saw only green hills. 



A STEPDAUGHTER OF THE PRAIRIE 19 

But had the prairie had a literature — if I 
could only have been sure that it was worthy 
to put in a book ! If Lowell and Whittier and 
Tennyson — most of all, Tennyson — had written 
of slough-grass and ground squirrels and 
barbed-wire fences, those despised elements 
would have taken on new aspects. I was a 
wistful peri longing for a literary paradise. 

But the Word on the horizon was something. 
It was far away, but it was real. I did not 
try to analyze its promise, but it was there. 



A PRAIRIE CARAVANSARY 

When we left the county road and turned 
into the drive, on our way home from school, 
there was usually a moment of excited expec- 
tation among us — unless the interest of getting 
the tag of the neighbor children who lived far- 
ther down the road put other things out of 
mind for the minute. But generally when we 
entered, or more likely climbed, our own gate 
and started up through the maple grove, we 
dropped school and neighbor children from our 
minds. Two far more important questions im- 
mediately confronted us — what would Maldy 
have for us to eat, and who would be visiting 
at the house? 

There was a combination of certainty and 
curiosity in both matters. As for the first, we 
knew that Maldy was even at this moment look- 
ing at the clock and getting out something for 
us to fall upon. For at any time after four 
o'clock we were painfully, unbearably hungry, 

20 



A STEPDAUGHTER OF THE PRAIRIE 21 

and we now hurried along the drive as if 
Famine itself dogged our footsteps. When one 
came home from school one went to the kitchen 
door, because when one appeared in the front 
of the house — if one were a little girl — with 
dinner-pail on arm and hair-ribbon off and 
straight hair flying and apron mussed and hat 
hanging by its elastic, They did not look ap- 
proving. For after the manner of children we 
gave distinct remoteness to the older genera- 
tion by calling them, collectively, They. 

Defined extensively, They included our pa- 
rents, who both belonged and did not belong, an 
intermittent grandparent or two, some floating 
uncles and aunts, the teacher when she boarded 
with us, all grown-up visitors who stayed over 
a week at once, any preachers at the place, how- 
ever brief their visit, and anyone else who 
might be regarded as embodying Mature Opin- 
ion. 

On this occasion the thing to do was to race 
around to the kitchen door and burst clamor- 
ously in on Maldy with ravenous demands for 
food. Maldy was pretty sure to be cross at 
this time of day, and to scold us roundly as she 



22 A STEPDAUGHTER OF THE PRAIRIE 

set out her savings for us. Maldy 's temper 
was as uncertain as her origin. What her race 
was no one knew, and most were afraid to ask. 
She had some German words of curious form 
and pronunciation, but when she was good- 
natured she called us mavourneen; and none of 
the strange men that came to the place ever 
succeeded in claiming her as a compatriot. But 
no mere American ever had the instinct for 
serving that Maldy had, and, if she did assume 
the right to scold, it was as one long identified 
with the family and regardful of the morals 
and manners of its heirs. All the time that she 
was berating us she was setting before us sub- 
stantial delights that made us impervious to 
her scoldings. Anyway, we divided her wrath 
with other malefactors. While she grumbled 
at us, she denounced at the same time the con- 
stant stream of visitors that came to our doors 
and interfered with her work and added to the 
cooking. 

Maldy had many aversions, but the first, last, 
and greatest was "stoppers," as she called 
them. They were an ever-present trouble to 
her, for visitors, of one sort or another, were 



A STEPDAUGHTER OF THE PRAIRIE 23 

almost as constant an element in our prairie 
home as the family itself. Towns were far 
apart and roads were uncertain, and it was 
easy to establish a reputation for hospitality. 
The Plantation, as some one unfamiliar with 
any farm had called ours, seemed to be the 
right distance from every place to make it con- 
venient for travelers to stay all night with us, 
no matter where they were going. This cir- 
cumstance afforded the second interest that 
hurried our steps as we neared the house. 

What sort of strangers would be there to- 
day? As we made the last turn in the drive 
rivalry ran high as to who would be the first 
to see if a spring wagon — there were only two 
carriages among all our acquaintance — or top- 
buggy, or even a lumber wagon, were in sight. 
If the vehicle were hitched before the house, 
that indicated merely callers ; if it stood out by 
the barn some one was going to stay all night, 
and we opened our minds for entertainment. 
Visitors did not always prove entertaining, it 
is true, but we kept our eyes on their possibili- 
ties. We seemed to live on the edge of a 
stream of people, constantly passing, but paus- 



24 A STEPDAUGHTER OF THE PRAIRIE 

ing momentarily as they passed. So far as we 
were concerned, we regarded the whole thing 
as arranged for our benefit. In a sense this 
long, kaleidoscopic line of people, passing by 
and through our house, was a social world to 
us. Our very fragmentary knowledge of 
classes and varieties of people, of professions 
and grades and manner of living, came, when 
not derived from books, from our observation 
of the people who trickled steadily past us. 

To be sure we were discouraged by Them 
from intercourse with this rather motley as- 
sortment, in which the plain respectability of 
our own real visitors was mixed with a medley 
of all sorts of wayfarers. Such a variety of 
guests as we had! Well-dressed friends from 
the east, coming out with a detached air to look 
over the country curiously; relatives, doubtful 
of the propriety of living so far from a daily 
paper ; speculators and prospectors catching at 
an accidental acquaintance as a basis for claim- 
ing hospitality; prairie folk, prosecuting a 
newly formed friendship with western readi- 
ness; preachers and colporteurs, and propa- 
gandists of all sorts, trying to plant their isms 



A STEPDAUGHTER OF THE PRAIRIE 25 

and ologies in a new land; candidates dashing 
in upon ns and offering to stay all night be- 
cause they were to speak at the schoolhouse; 
wayfarers of every sort, begging any kind of 
shelter and pleading the distance to the nearest 
town ; peddlers and agents and movers and cat- 
tle buyers; and, ever and anon, passers-by 
driven in by the storm or stopped by heat or 
cold. 

The approach of a storm was commonly ac- 
companied by a little flock of wayfarers scurry- 
ing up the drive to ask shelter. Sometimes 
they were overtaken and came driven in, all 
battered and drenched, and stood dripping 
around the kitchen stove while my mother and 
Maldy hunted out dry garments of assorted 
sizes for them. There were times when our 
wardrobes did not furnish variety enough. I 
remember one corpulent and jolly matron who 
sat through the evening robed in a coat of my 
father's and an ample gray blanket, pinned 
around her waist; and, on another occasion, a 
round-headed little urchin who spent the whole 
of his sojourn with us on the floor behind his 
mother's chair because he was attired in my 



26 A STEPDAUGHTER OF THE PRAIRIE 

too-feminine garments. One party committed 
the enormity, in Maldy's eyes, of returning un- 
washed the garments they had borrowed to 
wear home ; we heard the tale so often that the 
second generation were known to us only by 
their inherited odium. There was one time, 
referred to for years as the Big Storm, when 
the house was overcrowded and travelers 
begged for a place to lie on the floor. The 
kitchen floor looked to us the next morning — 
that was a great day for us children, and we 
rose early to be sure to miss nothing — like a 
picture of Mohammedans at prayer. Maldy 
was crossly picking her way around among the 
prostrate forms, none too careful of outlying 
fingers, while she prepared a breakfast on the 
scale of a barbecue. 

Haphazard "stoppers" like these were of an 
entertaining quality far beyond that of the real 
visitors, who slept in the best bed, and for 
whom we had breakfast a little later than usual. 
We knew all about them beforehand, but these 
strange people who appeared suddenly at our 
gates and flitted in the morning moved in a 
halo of the unknown. And in spite of all in- 



A STEPDAUGHTER OF THE PRAIRIE 27 

junctions we would hang about and stare and 
eavesdrop, alert for dramatic elements. It 
was possible they represented a whole scheme 
of life we knew nothing about, and we were 
always hoping to find in them samples of ro- 
mance. 

There were three general classes of sojourn- 
ers: those who were given the spare bed — we 
had the only one within five miles, it was said ; 
those who were put into the big bare kitchen 
chamber that held three beds and was known as 
the Barrack; and those who were sent to the 
barn to sleep on the hay. This class, I must 
say, struck us as the most interesting of all, 
and only Their vigilance kept us from slipping 
out to pursue acquaintance with them. We 
spent a good deal of time in the unsatisfactory 
effort to match bits of real episodes to books, 
as a shopper would match goods to a sample, 
and were always finding misfit specimens of 
Irving or Dickens. 

There was once an opportunity that we re- 
garded as rare. One sleety night an unkempt 
little old man came driven in, asking, or rather 
offering to accept, supper and a bed. Maldy 



28 A STEPDAUGHTER OF THE PRAIRIE 

had my mother out to look him over, and for a 
moment she stood doubtful, divided between 
compassion and housewifely scruples. But it 
was a bitter night, and the sleet on the window 
decided her. The old man meanwhile stood 
with an air of indifferent dignity, as if waiting 
to see whether his offer was to be accepted. It 
was not until Maldy had set his supper that he 
made his greatness known. He was, he said, 
appointed by the government to inspect all 
cases of hog cholera in Iowa, Missouri, Kan- 
sas, and Nebraska ; and he was, moreover, next 
to Fowler, the greatest phrenologist on the 
continent. Then he looked up under his eye- 
brows at the little row of youngsters watching 
him from behind the kitchen table, and made 
some offhand reference to my too well-known 
dislike for home duties. And, while I blushed 
and the boys grinned and nudged me, the old 
man mentioned, with a casual air, Henry's diffi- 
culties with arithmetic; then, as we stood ap- 
palled, he followed up these thrusts with other 
home truths and a side reference to Maldy that 
made her glower at him across her dish pan. 
It was uncanny. We fled to carry the news and 



A STEPDAUGHTER OF THE PRAIRIE 29 

seek reinforcement, and before the scientist had 
cleared the table — he emptied every dish — the 
entire household was in the kitchen. Those who 
were not too squeamish or sensitive had their 
heads bumped, while the delighted remainder 
commented on the results. Any witticisms or 
jeers from the audience were unwise, however, 
for they drew down on the speaker an estimate 
of himself expressed without euphemism or re- 
serve. It was the first time we had ever heard 
of the faded-out science, and the whole affair 
was as marvelous as second sight. For myself, 
I shrank from having any too intimate knowl- 
edge of my character made public, so I re- 
mained discreetly in the background, privately 
resolving to seek the man early in the morn- 
ing to get encouragement for my modest hopes 
of a poet's career. But in the morning he was 
gone, off on his hog-cholera quest, doubtless, 
leaving Maldy raging because in return for her 
kindness he had told her what kind of tempera- 
ment she should select in a husband. 

Phrenology was not the only form of knowl- 
edge that came our way. An engaging young 
man with a cough sat on the porch o c ne summer 



30 A STEPDAUGHTER OF THE PRAIRIE 

night and mapped out the heavens for us, and 
peopled them with strange forms, until we 
knew more astronomy than we have known 
since. Once there came along a reverend old 
Jew, who asked to be allowed to spend his Sab- 
bath with us, to avoid travel; and my father 
half-humorously consented on condition that 
he also spend our Sabbath, and avoid travel. 
So he stayed, and on the long Saturday and 
Sunday afternoons gave us children the history 
of his people from the restoration down. We 
had never heard of the Maccabees before, and 
had always supposed that Hebrew history 
ended with the book of Acts. In fact, we had 
always thought of the Jews as merely a suc- 
cession of moral illustrations, and we listened 
with amazement and growing delight to his 
long tales of romance and tragedy, of persecu- 
tion and retribution and dreary suffering. It 
was all told with a passion and a fire of patriot- 
ism that made history, any history, for the first 
time a living thing to us. When he gave us his 
blessing and took himself and his beard away 
on Monday morning, we felt as if we had been 



A STEPDAUGHTER OF THE PRAIRIE SI 

on terms of conversation with the patriarchs 
themselves. 

And once there was the most wonderful lady, 
the wife of a traveling preacher, who recited, 
or half -chanted, old ballads to us for a whole 
evening, until we were fairly steeped in the 
things of balladry. We sat up until nine 
o'clock that night, and then went blinking off 
to bed, seeing knights and outlaws and steeds 
shod with gold. It was with great reluctance 
that we let her go in the morning. We clung to 
her after breakfast, and she appeased us by 
rattling off an Ingoldsby Legend while the men 
were putting on the horses, and then went gaily 
away. If her husband had not been there for 
prosaic evidence, we could never have believed 
that she was a preacher's wife. We had not 
had much entertainment out of preachers' 
wives up to that time. They were too tired 
and too grayish generally. That one of them 
could have happy brown eyes and a fresh white 
dress to put on for supper, and could know 
anything so well worth while as Chevy Chase 
or Caldon Low, was proof to us that our knowl- 



$2 A STEPDAUGHTER OF THE PRAIRIE 

edge, even of our little world, was not yet com- 
plete. 

With preachers themselves we thought we 
were fairly well acquainted as a class. Noth- 
ing was commoner than to see one driving in 
on a late afternoon and announcing his inten- 
tion of staying all night, saying cheerfully, 
"You know we call this the preachers' hotel." 
I don't know where so many preachers came 
from, or why they always seemed to be going 
somewhere. We had no conception of them as 
being stationed permanently in a place. They 
were as much an itinerant class as were the 
movers, in our youthful experience. Probably 
at this distance their visits look closer than 
they really were, but we seem to have been al- 
ways making acquaintance with new ones or 
rewelcoming old ones. There were home mis- 
sionaries, and Sunday-school organizers, and 
an occasional circuit-rider, and broken-down 
ministers testing the climate, and candidates, 
and once in a while a colporteur who left us 
some new books, rather savorless for children 
devoted to Scott, but acceptable as being new. 
We found it a slight objection to the preachers 



A STEPDAUGHTER OF THE PRAIRIE 33 

that, when they were asked to conduct prayers, 
they always prayed twice as long as was my 
father's custom. And just after breakfast on 
a summer morning, when so many things are 
waiting to do, almost any prayer was long 
enough. Children are callous little indiffer- 
ents, and we were grown up before we realized 
how much severe effort and endurance of hard 
things, and how many personal tragedies, per- 
haps, were represented in these men. Fortu- 
nately They were less indifferent, and no tired 
minister ever left our door at nightfall. 

But on the whole, to our discredit be it said, 
we did not find much entertainment in the 
preachers. I am afraid the only one whose 
periodical return we hailed with delight was 
the one who made faces. He seemed to have 
his facial muscles under control so long as he 
kept his eyes open, but as soon as he closed 
them, as in prayer, he began to make the most 
amazing contortions, as if his face played 
pranks as soon as it was out of sight. The 
elders, with their eyes properly closed, did not 
see him. In fact, the position directly in front 
of him was at a premium, to be schemed or bar- 



34 A STEPDAUGHTER OF THE PRAIRIE 

gained for, and from it we watched him in aw- 
ful delight, mingled with fear lest our mirth 
should escape bounds. 

One of these same preachers was the first 
poet I ever saw. I had heard beforehand that 
this man was a poet, and I was all in a twitter 
to see him. I had written some experimental 
and carefully concealed verses myself, and I 
expected to find either encouragement or dis- 
couragement in the very look of the man. And 
lo, he was a funny little person in a queer, 
greenish coat, and at the table — I had maneu- 
vered to get the seat opposite him — he had a 
way of popping his food into his mouth as if he 
were secreting it, and giving a covert glance 
around the table after each bite. And he let 
my father and the candidate for Congress do 
all the talking. But I still hoped. And, sure 
enough, he finally got out a volume of manu- 
script poems and left it on the table while he 
went for a walk. Manners and poems have 
nothing to do with each other, and I pounced 
upon it. It was all written out in the finest, 
plainest little hand, and all paged and title- 
paged and everything — printing could not im- 



A STEPDAUGHTER OF THE PRAIRIE 35 

prove it. I opened it at random and began, 
' * Said the Rose so red to the Lily white. ' ' That 
was not a Virgilian dip. I could not condemn 
the manner, although it was not my own, but I 
already knew the type of verse in which roses 
and lilies were capitalized. I tried again and 

found, 

Oh, had I the wings of the innocent Dove, 

I know what I should do; 
I'd wing my way to the skies above, 

And sing my heart out in the blue. 

That was not in the least like Tennyson or 
Moore. I learned then once for all that modern 
poetry is decadent and that the theological 
mind is not poetic. And when, an hour later, I 
heard the little man offering to read some of 
his poems, I slipped away and spent the after- 
noon in the top of a maple tree, selecting a new 
career for myself. 

There was one group of travelers that was a 
constant stimulus to our imaginations — the 
emigrants to Kansas and Nebraska, the 
movers. As soon as spring opened they began 
to pass, going hopefully westward. And until 
the last bright November days had ended they 



36 A STEPDAUGHTER OF THE PRAIRIE 

repassed, going back, now disheveled and worn, 
with signs of hopelessness even we could read. 
They were objects of great curiosity to us, 
and more so as the abundant hospitality of the 
Plantation was not open to them freely. It was 
even an annoyance to our household that a fa- 
vorite camping place of theirs was at our gate, 
and that they came to the house for water, for 
fuel, for milk, for a quart of flour, for medi- 
cine for the baby, for apples, for " light 
bread," for every sort of provision for 
nomadic housekeeping. The announcement 
that movers were at the gate was always fol- 
lowed by an intermittent procession to and 
from the house, of lank, unshaven men, attended 
a few feet behind by small boys in long trous- 
ers, perseveringly hitched up. 

Over the fire down by the gate, dusty-haired 
women, with a general limpness in manner and 
movement and dress, were cooking sizzling 
things in smoke-blackened skillets. I must have 
seen scores of movers, but I never saw a fat 
one. And no other class of people could have 
so nearly the effect of being invertebrate. But 
to us children they were almost too interesting 



A STEPDAUGHTER OF THE PRAIRIE Si 

to be pitiful; and, had they looked fresh and 
well-fed and normal, our curiosity regarding 
them would have been much less. As they 
were, gaunt and dusty and ambitionless, slack 
of movement and drooping of eye, they seemed 
to us almost a race by themselves. 

Intercourse with them was forbidden by our 
elders, but we managed to slip away down to 
the roadside to watch them, poking our respec- 
table home-keeping toes into the cracks of the 
gate and chinning the top rail. We tried at 
first to imagine them into gypsies, heroes of 
our reading. But we had to give that up. 
There was a charm and a mystery about the 
movers, but it was a different thing from the 
gypsy atmosphere, as we knew it. Even we 
recognized that these people were ridden by 
circumstances instead of riding them. We felt 
vaguely that the movers were not choosing, but 
slackly enduring. Sometimes there was a su- 
perficial bravado about them as they came back 
eastward, though I don't know that it went 
deeper than their grimy wagon-covers. On 
these used to be chalked up the last assertion 
of courage and gayety. " Going back to our 



38 A STEPDAUGHTER OF THE PRAIRIE 

wife's folks," we used to spell out; or the 

couplet that we did not know was already a 

classic, 

In God we trusted, 

In Kansas we busted. 

It used to thrill us with what we regarded as 
its daring irreverence and mocking tragedy. 
Sometimes the emigrants were young men, 
only making a throw at fortune, willing to 
stand the consequences. They came back, if 
they came, as gaily as they went. But the older 
men, with their wives and families along, for 
whom success was a matter of life and death — 
they went scarcely less soberly than they re- 
turned, when the drought drove them back. 
For the stern land beyond the river was taking 
its pick of all that came to it, and rejecting all 
that were mean of spirit or faint of resolve or 
slow of resource. Those of strongest fiber re- 
mained, but the others crept back to the easier 
land they had come from and its accustomed 
ways. 

Perhaps they were not so pitiable a lot as 
they now seem to be. Maybe our childish judg- 
ment of them was largely a matter of sympa- 



A STEPDAUGHTER OF THE PRAIRIE 39 

thy, based on their apparently having bacon 
for every snpper and every breakfast, washing 
their faces always in cold water, and having 
no lamp to read by in the evenings. We should 
have thought those insupportable trials. But 
there was real tragedy, too. Once a wagon 
came that did not stop on the road, but came 
right through the open gate, and up the drive 
to the house. The cover was ragged and gray, 
and sagged between the hoops like the skin of 
an emaciated old horse. The horses them- 
selves, absurdly ill-matched, were gaunt and 
patchy-looking. On the seat, under the front 
of the swaying canvas cover, sat a woman with 
a baby across her knees. She was driving, with 
an evident sense of urgency which she could 
not impart to the poor horses, for all her futile 
"Get ups" and slapping of the lines on their 
skinny backs. "Can I stop here? Fve got to 
stop, ' ' she said, with a mixture of shyness and 
insistence, the forced assertiveness of a timid 
woman. In the back of the wagon lay her hus- 
band, sick unto death. For once our house 
was open to movers, with every resource and 
every help possible. The prairie was not yet 



40 A STEPDAUGHTER OF THE PRAIRIE 

educated to fear of tuberculosis. But in the 
morning the man died. And then presently 
there was a little funeral, to which a few neigh- 
bors kindly came, and a passing colporteur 
read a service, and the grave was made just 
beyond the edge of our lawn. To us children, 
hovering on the outskirts of an affair in which 
we had no part, it was all very strange and 
new. Then the baby and the mother were kept 
for a few days, while the baby was fed and 
petted and plumpened and the poor mother 
was given a little room to take her grief away 
to. There she wrote a letter and waited for an 
answer to it. At last it came, and early one 
morning the queer horses, now fed and rested, 
were hitched to the old wagon, and the poor 
widow drove away into the sunrise to meet a 
brother who was at the same time starting 
westward to meet her. 

There was another time when, as I was sit- 
ting with my mother in a summer early twi- 
light, a great slatternly woman tore in through 
the open door and, it seemed to me, flung her- 
self and a little yellow ghost of a baby upon 
my mother's lap, moaning, "Oh, ma'am, my 



A STEPDAUGHTER OF THE PRAIRIE 41 

baby 's dying — my baby 's dying ! ' ' I remember 
with what earnest calm my mother went about 
her hot baths and poultices and little doses, and 
how her undisturbed competence contrasted 
with the impotent frenzy of the other woman. 
Finally the baby lay quiet in a pale little sleep, 
and my mother put this woman and child in 
their turn into the same small room the other 
had occupied. If she regretted it the next day 
as a housekeeper, she did not as a Samaritan, 
and calmly made the room ready for another 
wayfarer. The child's father, by the way, 
smoked by his camp-fire all the evening, and 
received his wife on her return the next morn- 
ing with merely a grunt, and she climbed into 
the wagon without a word. We children saw it, 
for we escorted our guests to the gate and hung 
on it to see them off and to observe humanity. 
I know that there were times when jolly par- 
ties camped at our gate and kept us awake 
with their loud laughter and singing ; and I am 
sure that some of those whose faces were 
turned westward must have looked thrifty and 
well-kept enough. But they were too much like 
the people we knew every day to make much 



42 A STEPDAUGHTER OF THE PRAIRIE 

impression on us. The prairie child has little 
opportunity to see either crime or poverty. 
But we couldn't help thinking that all movers 
were interestingly poor; and, rightly or 
wrongly, the disappearance of hay and corn, 
of apples and wood, when coincident with the 
sojourn of the movers, was laid at their door 
by the household. We had never seen a beg- 
gar or a thief, and we wanted to tremendously ; 
so the general repute in which the movers were 
held only added piquancy and a sort of liter- 
ary flavor to our interest in them. We could 
not help having a romantic regard for the man 
who, though now negotiating meekly for a little 
corn, might be going to steal our peaches over- 
night, or milk a cow at four o 'clock in the morn- 
ing. It was the only moral, or immoral, daring 
we knew anything about. 

There was another itinerant class of endless 
interest to us. It was a day of grief when the 
agent began to supersede the peddler. There 
can be no comparison between the person who 
hastens light- armed from town to town, entic- 
ing his customers with samples or specimen 
pages or a prospectus, and the peddler, trudg- 



A STEPDAUGHTER OF THE PRAIRIE 43 

ing the long country roads with his honest 
wares on his weary back. At our house we al- 
ways bought something from the peddler, be- 
cause we lived so far from the road and it was 
a pity to have him come all that way for noth- 
ing. For the same reason we gave him dinner 
or supper often, and even allowed him to stay 
all night. Those were the best times of all, for 
then he did not open his pack until after sup- 
per, and we could all sit round and see it, the 
children in an inside ring on the floor. Any- 
thing out of a peddler's pack was much more 
desirable than an article from a store. For a 
store was merely a store; but this pack had 
been carried and carried along who knew what 
unknown country roads, and opened in what 
strange places. It had a flavor of far-off 
regions. 

The little men themselves, with their smooth, 
commercial obsequiousness and their queer ac- 
cent, had a strangeness very unwestern. There 
was a remarkable likeness in their packs when 
opened out. They always had fringed things 
with red borders, towels and napkins and 
tablecloths, "real Irish linen, madam/ ' and a 



44 A STEPDAUGHTER OF THE PRAIRIE 

poplin dress pattern, and beads, and jewelry in 
alluring settings, and thimbles and combs and 
zephyr shawls and cotton lace and bandanas 
and flowered silk handkerchiefs. If we could 
have had our way, we should have bought the 
whole pack of charming things outright, and 
sent the little man back to his mysterious 
source to get another. And yet the most fasci- 
nating part of the whole performance was to 
see the goods packed away again; we never 
missed watching him fit all his wares exactly 
and carefully into place, and tie his square of 
smelly black oilcloth over them. 

Other itinerants claimed a momentary in- 
terest. Periodically there were candidates. I 
believe that of all " stoppers" they were the 
least interesting. We could never be enthusi- 
astic over the fact that they had little girls at 
home just our size ; while, as for their vocifer- 
ous talk about the tariff or the rights of farm- 
ers, it was almost beneath notice. Such guests 
always raised the oft-recurring question, why 
it was so hard for grown people to be interest- 
ing. We were quite ready to be amused — no 
one could have had a more open mind for en- 



A STEPDAUGHTER OF THE PRAIRIE 45 

tertainment than we — but why did they so 
often offer such futile matter for our amuse- 
ment? Sometimes it used to seem to us that 
grown-ups, even with all the interest attached 
to them, were very unsatisfactory. They talked 
away continually, and we on our part had a 
thousand subjects among ourselves. Then why 
could they not establish real conversational re- 
lations with us? I suppose they did not know 
the quality of the curiosity with which we re- 
garded them as we stood around in the penum- 
bra of affairs, apparently dumb with shyness. 
The fact is, we were not really very shy at all. 
We were summing up our elders according to 
our little standards ; and while they were talk- 
ing away so glibly, with an occasional patroniz- 
ing word to us, we were sometimes wondering 
hazily why, if they knew so much, they did not 
know more. 

Even Relations often proved lacking in 
unique attractiveness — for first, last, and al- 
ways there were Relations among our visitors. 
Other company had periods of passage or so- 
journ, and came thickest in the summer 
months. But neither time nor season, seed- 



46 A STEPDAUGHTER OF THE PRAIRIE 

time nor harvest, affected the ebb and flow of 
visiting Eelations. Uncle and aunt, cousin and 
second cousin came out of the mysterious east 
either to pause a few days as birds of passage 
or to settle down for weeks and experience the 
country and the climate. They came by train 
to the railroad station fifteen long prairie miles 
away, and in the dim early hours some one 
started with a spring wagon to get them and 
their luggage. 

They always came in with a little flurry of 
excitement over the long ride and the novelty 
of the prairie. A conscious spirit of adventure 
hung about them, especially if they were mak- 
ing their first visit. They knew, and they ex- 
pected everyone else to be aware, that they 
were undertaking a great enterprise in coming 
away out here and bringing their trunks fifteen 
miles from a railroad. Presently the group of 
children was introduced and the Relations were 
surprised to find how big we were and how 
many there were of us, and got our names all 
mixed up. That was an ordeal, and none of us 
came out of it very well. It was a very attrac- 
tive Relation who kept our interest and respect 



A STEPDAUGHTER OF THE PRAIRIE 47 

through it all. I could not even now wish my 
worst enemy anything more malevolent than 
that the whole world could see him while he 
was being introduced to a family of six chil- 
dren, the parents pervading the scene. They 
used to fall on me with "And this is Mary!" 
with evident satisfaction in their cleverness 
and cordiality — and I was not Mary at all, and 
the real Mary was no more pleased than I was. 
Then the elders all talked among themselves, 
while we children stood around the edges of 
things and formed provisional opinions of 
them. 

Some time later they turned their attention 
to us again. They knew the duties of a guest. 
On our part we were willing but unexpectant, 
for we had been through the experience before ; 
but, after all, Eelations should have their 
chance, and the credit of the family lay mo- 
mentarily in our hands. We knew what they 
would ask — how old we were, and how far on 
in school, and had we ever got lost on the prai- 
rie, and had we a pony, and so on. We an- 
swered politely, even fully, keeping hopeful 
watch for signs of originality. But expectation 



48 A STEPDAUGHTER OF THE PRAIRIE 

was really low; it seemed that Relations must 
always be, not only officially but generically, 
Relations, and no more. 

One part of the interview we did hate tre- 
mendously; that was when they settled whom 
we looked like. We knew we must go through 
it with each relay of kinsfolk. And what dif- 
ference in the world did it make whom we 
looked like? — it was too late to do anything 
about it now. For my own part I suffered 
through a year of purgatory while my plain 
little features were passed upon and hung up 
on various branches of the family tree. In 
our own circle it was understood that my looks 
were not to be mentioned. Pretty Mary did 
not mind the ordeal. No one ever came to the 
house who did not find her the exact image of 
a mother or a daughter or a sister. Her case 
was easily settled. But me, alas, no one 
claimed. The Marshalls remarked that I got 
my mouth from the Johnsons, and the Johnsons 
ascribed my nondescript little nose to the Mar- 
shalls. I easily learned to recognize the tone 
of mingled toleration and superiority with 
which Relations spoke of the other side of the 



A STEPDAUGHTER OF THE PRAIRIE 49 

house. Finally a happy soul made the discov- 
ery that I looked like some extinct branch of 
ancestry, and brought out some infamous old 
daguerreotypes to prove it. One look at the 
pictures was enough for me, and I never saw 
them again except in dreams. 

After the second day the visitors bothered 
us little. At least if they were the ordinary 
negligible adults we saw very little of them, 
for all day long we were about our own pur- 
suits. Of course, they were sometimes of di- 
dactic tendencies, and then we had to protect 
ourselves from them. There was a sweet-look- 
ing cushiony old lady, for instance, who seemed 
at first sight to be the very balm of Gilead. I 
hung about her a good deal at the outset, for 
her sweet, bookish language. She referred to 
my frock and my pinafore, and asked me to 
pluck her a bloom. But I found that she had a 
way of looking appraisingly at me and saying, 
1 i Isn't there something a little girl like you 
could be doing to help her mother!" That al- 
ways gave me a moment of embarrassed silence 
before I faded away into the outdoors. Do- 
mestic duties lay strictly between my mother 



50 A STEPDAUGHTER OF THE PRAIRIE 

and me, and it was indelicate for an outsider, 
even if she were a great-something, to intrude. 

There was a companion piece to her, an old 
gentleman on the other side of the house, who 
used to turn on me with abrupt questions about 
trivial facts. He would interrupt his conversa- 
tion with the elders on my approach to inter- 
polate, "Well, and where are the Himalaya 
Mountains V or "And what can you tell me 
about Hannibal," and multiply my confusion 
by recalling the fact that he had read Rollin's 
Ancient History through before he was ten. If 
these two persons happened to visit us at the 
same time, we avoided the house entirely dur- 
ing their stay, except when we unobtrusively 
slipped in to meals. 

Of course there were jolly young uncles who 
played croquet with us and gave us a hand up 
on the pony, and were altogether human; and 
young lady cousins, with pretty clothes and 
new hairdressing, who helped to make maga- 
zine stories realizable. And we liked the gen- 
eral atmosphere of company — real company — 
in the house. Discipline insensibly relaxed 
somewhat — the haphazard "stoppers" only 



A STEPDAUGHTER OF THE PRAIRIE 51 

had the effect of making it more careful — and 
we were, both physically and intellectually, less 
the objects of conscientious attention. Guests 
hardly realize what a boon they may be con- 
ferring upon the children of the family. 

But all these conditions of life changed even 
while we watched them. Neighboring places 
thickened up on the prairie. Towns came 
nearer, and bridges and roads appeared. Be- 
fore our childhood was over the far horizon 
had lost its smooth prairie line and was 
notched with houses and trees. The procession 
on the road was fuller than before, but it did 
not pause so often. Presently we ceased to 
see the rounded canvas top of a mover wagon 
at our gate; and trudging peddlers gave way 
to glib agents. The sudden hurry and flurry 
occasioned by the unexpected arrival of guests 
or pathetic wayfarers occurred less and less 
often. Hospitality became a matter of choice, 
not a requirement of bare humanity. The 
glamour of the highway passed ; the Road be- 
came merely a road. And we, alas and alas, 
grew up. 



THE UBBAN TEST 

Uncle Henby was talking to my father down 
by the yards one evening — I was hanging on 
the gate and I heard him. 

"It's all right for you and Mary," he said. 
"You seem well enough satisfied out here. But 
what about the children? You can't let them 
grow up ignorant. They really ought to be 
having proper advantages." 

I turned my head and seemed to be looking 
inattentively the other way. At an interesting 
point in a conversation it was customary, I had 
learned, to devise some errand for any chil- 
dren within hearing, and I did want to hear 
what my father was going to say. But he only 
looked thoughtfully across at my brother 
Henry sitting in the open door of a low barn 
loft, his legs dangling happily in space. 

Uncle Henry's young son Ahthuh (only we 
said Arrthurr, except when we were making 
fun of him behind his mother's New England 
back) was seated painfully aloft on our tall old 



A STEPDAUGHTER OF THE PRAIRIE 53 

Jude, his knees hugging Jude 's lean sides ; and 
Henry was joyfully daring him to dismount by 
the natural method. But Arthur looked fear- 
fully at the distant ground and curled his feet 
up higher. Finally he urged Jude slowly up to a 
convenient fence, stretched an exploring foot to 
find the top rail, and slid carefully off. Henry 
meanwhile produced a long stick from the hay 
behind him, pole-vaulted airily down from his 
perch, and came over to join us, pausing on his 
way to give a proprietary dig to the well- 
rounded side of his pet calf. 

"What did you name your calf, Henry ?" 
asked my father, leaving Uncle Henry unan- 
swered for the moment, to my disappointment. 
That interesting discussion was evidently to be 
deferred until there were fewer children about. 

"Eurydice," said Henry simply. 

Uncle Henry adjusted his glasses and looked 
with interest at the spotted myth, at this mo- 
ment engaged in securing unmythical suste- 
nance, bunting the maternal side, and stamping 
and whisking in an ecstasy of appetite. 

"I never saw a calf named Eurydice be- 
fore,' ' he said. "Does she come?" 



54 A STEPDAUGHTER OF THE PRAIRIE 

Henry obligingly experimented with, a half- 
screech, half-whistle, a wild travesty of lyric 
notes. The calf waved its tail blandly, but did 
not look around. 

"Sometimes she does and sometimes she 
doesn't," he said. "That's why she's Eury- 
dice. ' ' 

"Who was Eurydice?" asked Arthur. 

But he was unheeded because Henry was 
saying jeeringly that I had named my calf 
Zenobia Joan-of-Arc Victoria, and I was an- 
swering spiritedly — having brothers helps to 
nourish one's spirit — "Well, I only had one 
calf." 

Uncle Henry laughed, more than I thought 
was needful. Everyone knew that it was our 
privilege to name the animals on the place, if 
they were distinguished enough to deserve 
names, and that the spring crop of beasts wore 
evidence of all our winter's reading. So there 
was really nothing much to be amused about. 
Of course, in the result, strange companions 
were housed side by side. Daniel Boone es- 
poused Cleopatra, and Silas Marner nosed his 
feed-trough in belligerent fellowship with 



A STEPDAUGHTER OF THE PRAIRIE 55 

.ZEneas or Elaine. For a while we named ani- 
mals after relatives and acquaintances, but that 
custom led several times to embarrassing epi- 
sodes, and They bade us desist, even when 
tempting resemblances clamored for recogni- 
tion. 

We usually had a waiting list of names, and 
quarreled regularly over the privilege of god- 
parenting the blinking new occupants of the 
yards and stables. Henry and John said Mary 
and I had no sense of fitness of names — colts 
should have different kinds of names from kit- 
tens. It is true that my confidence did have a 
blow occasionally. After I had bought, with 
my half of one of Maldy's turnovers, the 
authority to name a pet chicken Felicia Hemans 
— Henry wanted to call it Ivanhoe, but I had 
just committed He Never Smiled Again, and 
I was firm — and Felicia grew up to be the most 
quarrelsome, gamey old rooster we had, I be- 
came less assertive of my rights and judgment. 
When the appearance of his first tail-feathers 
bore an appalling truth to me, I tried to meet 
the circumstance by cutting them back to an 
appropriate feminine length. But masculinity 



56 A STEPDAUGHTER OF THE PRAIRIE 

will tell in spite of dress. I could cut off the 
tail-feathers, but I could not eliminate the 
crow, the right and sign of his sex. So I only- 
made Felicia Hemans ridiculous for life, and 
myself so for nearly that long. 

But, after all, the naming of animals is a 
mild amusement, and no one but ourselves saw 
much fun in it. Arthur did not care for it in 
the least, nor did any of our other visitors. 
And after Uncle Henry had got through laugh- 
ing at me he walked away with my father. I 
gave up following them, as I had first thought 
of doing, and let the rest of their conversation 
go unheard. Arthur, apparently with a sense 
that he had been appearing to disadvantage, 
began to tell us of a dog-and-pony show he had 
seen. We had never seen a dog-and-pony show, 
and Arthur's familiarity with one seemed, in 
his mind at least, to compensate for his inabil- 
ity either to stay on a horse or to get off one. 
In fact, it somehow appeared to be a credit to 
him to have seen the show, and before he had 
finished his account his recent mortification 
was forgotten, and he was patronizing us and 
condescending to us after his usual fashion. 



A STEPDAUGHTER OF THE PRAIRIE 57 

There is no superiority so superior as that of 
the ten-year-old. 

It was a superiority we often met. It was 
really exasperating, the attitude toward us 
and our experience assumed by children who 
came with their parents to visit us. Usually 
visitors who came on the train left their chil- 
dren behind them, having dark fears and sus- 
picions concerning this strange and unproved 
land to which they were coming. Actuated by 
the vague but powerful apprehension that 
i ' something might happen, ' ' they left their off- 
spring behind within the safe confines of the 
long-sanctioned East, where we were allowed 
to suppose that nothing happened, and risked 
only themselves to the possibility of an experi- 
ence they had never had before, and the un- 
desirable chance of a new sensation. 

But occasionally an adventurous and Provi- 
dence-trusting parent brought a child or two 
along, to expose them to the prairie, as it were. 
We hailed them always with delight, for there 
were none too many children to play with out 
on the prairie, and such as we knew were often 
either inaccessible or forbidden. The little 



58 A STEPDAUGHTER OF THE PRAIRIE 

broken-speeched Germans on the east of us, 
and the sandy little Irish on the west, were as 
impossible as the little aborigines in the hol- 
low, who came from the bluffs and had under- 
wear made out of discarded flour-sacks. Un- 
democratic Maldy thought them all beneath us, 
and all but forbade them the place. She was 
so vigorous and so vigilant in the enforcement 
of her prohibitions that it was not necessary 
for any of the other elders to make any. As 
for the acquaintances we made at school, we 
generally left them behind at school, and all 
summer long did not see them. It will be seen 
that we were meagerly furnished with compan- 
ions of the right age; that is why our parents 
used to urge visiting friends to bring their chil- 
dren with them. 

The experiment had variable results, though 
it always started with the same promising be- 
ginning — from our shy welcome of our guests 
in the presence of the elders, to the moment 
when we dexterously segregated them from the 
hampering grown-up society and took them to 
the outdoors, the only place where acquaint- 
ance could really begin. Before the end of the 



A STEPDAUGHTER OF THE PRAIRIE 59 

first day something was defined, usually; the 
subtle adjustment of eastern sophistication and 
western immaturity, to use a euphemism, was 
begun. But let no one think that such an ad- 
justment was easily accomplished. Two such 
combinations of elements required nice balanc- 
ing. On the one hand was the God-given su- 
periority, modestly but inevitably expressed, 
of the comer from beyond the Alleghanies. 
Coupled with this were the misbegotten but 
wholly natural vanity bred of contact with 
street-cars and grade-schools and ice-cream 
sodas and electric lights and fire companies, 
and the augmented importance of the recent 
three days' trip on the train, with all its ex- 
perience. It is hard for the most modest per- 
son to go three days from home and not derive 
added importance from the circumstance. 

Beside all these glories what had our meager 
experience to show? We were on our own 
ground to be sure, but when it comes to match- 
ing tales that is not an unmixed advantage. 
We could ride our ponies like little Indians, but 
our visitors could tell of a Wild West Show. 
We could beat them out and out at chess and 



60 A STEPDAUGHTER OF THE PRAIRIE 

such things, but they knew roller skates and 
skating rinks. We were regular little Tom 
Twists, but they had seen league games, even 
football games. We had read more books than 
they had looked into, commonly, but they had 
been to vaudeville. Our disadvantages are 
plainly to be seen. 

Our little resources and amusements used to 
shrink and seem colorless before their critical 
eyes, and, had it not been for some degree of 
contrariness in ourselves, we should have been 
almost ashamed of our meager sources of en- 
tertainment. The little city-bred visitors did 
not see any fun in our many-roomed play- 
houses, with pursley for door mats; or in our 
rival farms staked off elaborately in the orch- 
ard, with fields for all kinds of grain and small 
potatoes for cattle in one pasture and grains of 
white corn for sheep in another, and tiny rustic 
dwellings constructed on a basis of crotched 
twigs. They did not enter with sufficient zest 
into the half-dozen games in which tumble- 
weeds played a part, for they did not see the 
possibilities we did in the erratic elusive globes, 
bounding alertly over the ground with a life of 



A STEPDAUGHTER OF THE PRAIRIE 61 

their own — frolicsome, teasing things, that in- 
vited and then avoided, and put the very im- 
pulse of play into one. Why has no one sung 
the lyric of the tumble-weeds? But our visit- 
ors put themselves altogether in the wrong by 
seeing in them only dry weeds. 

Nor did such visitors follow us very sympa- 
thetically in our borrowings from books to en- 
liven actualities. They did not care for long 
games of chess, in which Macbeth was pitted 
endlessly against Julius Caesar, or for the 
daily reproduction of the Punic wars in every 
sort of contest, from berry-picking to forbidden 
races on the lumbering farm-horses. That was 
an affair that never ended — there really was no 
reason why there should not be a thousand 
Punic wars as well as three. It was our way 
of exercising the delight of partisanship, which 
everyone must find in some form. Henry, with 
large, masculine vision, helped to his conclu- 
sion by the Supposed Speech of Regulus, in- 
sisted that the success of Rome was better for 
the world, and I didn 't see what that had to do 
with it. For my part, my imagination was 
fired by Hannibal's vow, made at an age that 



62 A STEPDAUGHTER OF THE PRAIRIE 

seemed to put him in our class, and by the ever- 
dramatic descent into Italy. My imagination 
was at fault, however, for I fear I never quite 
lost the impression of a picture I early formed 
of him seating his army neatly on a glacier and 
sliding nobly down to the gates of Rome. Any- 
way, rivalry on such an epic scale had a great 
fascination for us, and for one whole summer 
we gave life to everyday matters by weaving 
it into them. But we found it hard to interest 
our grade-school visitors in it. They knew 
more dates than we did, but they did not know 
how to snatch the dramatic from the historic 
for their own delight. 

We were not very good hosts, I am afraid, 
for we frankly tired of continual activity and 
returned to our books for hours at a time. It 
was a severe test of the virtue of hospitality 
to be obliged to give up one's personal habits. 
And who would want to give up the long after- 
noons when we lay stretched on the grass under 
a box-elder tree, two reading from one book 
which neither could wait for, with elbow to el- 
bow and shoulder to shoulder, and no word be- 
tween us but, " Ready to turn?" Who could 



A STEPDAUGHTER OF THE PRAIRIE 63 

give up reading like this, even for company? 
We didn't always, I am sorry to say, and were 
frequently snatched back from happy isles with 
the chiding reminder that we must be about 
entertaining our guests. The spirit in which 
we returned to our social duties was no credit 
to us. 

Some of the children caught the spirit of our 
games and so endeared themselves to us. But 
some of them, very ill-trained from our point 
of view, could find no use or charm in any toys 
that did not come out of a store, all adapted 
for a specific purpose. They did not know the 
joys that we knew in using things for purposes 
for which they were never intended; and it is 
a joy that cannot be taught. One little slender- 
legged maiden would not play out of doors at 
all, because we had no sidewalk and the ground 
hurt her feet. 

But there was one point in which they all 
found delight. That was in telling us about the 
things that they had and we did not have. The 
field was large, but I must own that the ex- 
positors did justice to it, for no department of 
it was left unvisited. I think they had not 



64 A STEPDAUGHTER OF THE PRAIRIE 

known how great their opportunities and ad- 
vantages were until they came to see us, who 
had not had the same. Then, upon discovering 
their own distinction, they spread themselves 
like little bay-trees, with every leaf a brazen 
horn, and boasted loudly of everyday matters 
which they had always before taken for 
granted. It must have been a very great de- 
scent for them when they returned to their own 
kind and lost this transient factitious impor- 
tance. I suppose that they then began to boast 
of their western trip. 

It was not that we objected to being told 
things. In fact, we rejoiced in every picture 
of a world outside our own. But it was the 
manner of telling that irked us. In our own 
plain language, we couldn't stand bragging. 
We disliked Arthur's assumption of proprie- 
torship of everything east of the Mississippi. 
Being still very young, we did not know how 
hard it is for one to go away from home and 
not take credit to himself for everything of 
merit or interest in his habitat. We could not 
know, then, that even we should in time be ar- 



A STEPDAUGHTER OF THE PRAIRIE 65 

rogating to ourselves all the virtues and 
charms of the West. 

When they could keep the element of per- 
sonal satisfaction out of it, we listened to their 
account with the greatest delight. There was 
nothing we did not want to know. We had 
never seen Coney Island or Central Park or 
parades or floats or soldiers or theaters or ele- 
vators or water works — or a thousand things 
that we were most willing to hear about, if the 
account were properly given. No wonder the 
limitations of our knowledge invited illumina- 
tion. 

It was this painful lack of experience on our 
part that Uncle Henry referred to in his talk 
with my father, and that led him, before he and 
Arthur left that summer, to make his Great 
Proposition. He would take us benighted 
younglings to the nearest city for a day and put 
as much enlightenment as could be into twelve 
well-spent hours. He could not bring up all the 
arrears of a neglected education in that limited 
time, but he could at least show us some of the 
things that were worth while, like elevators 
and illuminated signs. And incidentally he 



66 A STEPDAUGHTER OF THE PRAIRIE 

could treat himself to the never-to-be-outgrown 
delight of causing surprise and giving a sensa- 
tion. One likes to cause amazement, even in a 
child. That interpretation of his motive, how- 
ever, is a surmise of later years. 

Anyway, the elders yielded a dubious assent, 
and Henry and I — the rest were too young or 
too old — were to go to the city for a day, under 
convoy of Uncle Henry, with Arthur as aide. 
And, ah me, the things that we were to see ! — 
things we had heard of and read of and 
dreamed of, but had only glimpsed occasionally 
on trips with our parents. Arthur's elaborate 
tales could not surpass our imaginings. Uncle 
Henry was a benefactor of benefactors ! 

To go to the city meant to rise at a period 
of the night that children hardly know exists — 
in fact, scarcely to go to bed at all — and to 
drive away through the still darkness to take a 
train that gathered us up and carried us on 
toward a faint, faint streak of the early sum- 
mer dawning. It was all a tremendous experi- 
ence. To be called out of sleep and to see mid- 
night for the first time in our lives, so far as 
we knew, and find the elders all walking around 



A STEPDAUGHTER OF THE PRAIRIE 67 

and doing things that were done in daytime ; to 
discover that cocks crowed in the middle of the 
night, and to sit down, in the echoes of Felicia 
Hemans's retort to a rooster across the creek, 
to a meal that was neither supper nor break- 
fast, but had all the best elements of both — 
that was a beginning! Even to have Them 
solicitous that we should eat enough gave a 
rare sort of introduction to the whole affair. 

Then came the swift ride along the prairie 
roads behind our fastest horses, and we faced 
the midnight charm of the sky, and saw the 
pale, useless thread of a moon glide under or 
out from the thin clouds, while the constant 
spat, spat of the horses' feet went steadily on. 

My mother's last solicitous words had been, 
"See that they don't fall out if they go to 
sleep. ' ' Arthur did promptly go to sleep, after 
wishing that we had some arc-lights along the 
road; and Henry, too, finally yielded. But 
sleep never touched me on all that long ride. 
Everything was too wonderful for that. What- 
ever great things we were to see on the mor- 
row, the dark was enough for me now. I 
seemed never to have known a real dark before. 



68 A STEPDAUGHTER OF THE PRAIRIE 

Sometimes the clouds gathered and swept up 
almost threateningly, and everything was hid- 
den but the faint line of road ahead of us and 
a vague suggestion of the stretches of land on 
each side. We crossed a long bridge that 
seemed to span Nothing. I could have found a 
horror in it all if delight had not made that im- 
possible. There was no need to people the 
gloom with horrors of any sort. The darkness 
was living enough. I had sometimes wakened 
for a moment in the night and found in the 
blackness of the room a mere negation which I 
had given quality to by fancying the Things in 
the corners before I dropped back into sleep 
again. But this darkness needed no mere fan- 
cies. When we went through some bits of tim- 
ber and the man driving pulled the horses down 
to a slow, cautious walk, I met a Dark I had 
never known to exist. The shadows of the 
trees could not accentuate it; the places where 
thick shade lay in daylight had lost their dis- 
tinction. I stared into it with all my might, 
trying to explore its degree. But nothing met 
me, only its assertion of itself. My eyes ached 



A STEPDAUGHTER OF THE PRAIRIE 69 

with staring, but I did not for a moment tire 
of its uneventful blackness. 

But we would come out from the woods 
again, and the clouds would scatter and grow 
thin, and the prairie would lie spread out in 
the pale light. For we were following the bias 
folk-roads that wound along ridges, skirting 
farms, or dipped into an occasional hollow to 
cross a little stream. Everything lay in a faint, 
almost unmarked gray. But it was a gray that 
was warm and distinct, for under it lay the liv- 
ing green of the prairie, or of the young crops 
on a farm. It faded off into mist on an indis- 
tinguishable horizon. The same cold night 
mist lay in the hollows by the streams. I 
breathed hard to get the full effect of its cold- 
ness. I had not dreamed that the prairie held 
such mystery as the night gave it. The steady 
baldness of the day was gone. The very fact 
that it could so change its appearance and pre- 
sent itself as a thing strange to me, made it into 
a wonder. 

Arthur and Henry slept on through all the 
jog and jostle of our quick ride, and Uncle 
Henry and the man who was driving us talked 



70 A STEPDAUGHTER OF THE PRAIRIE 

about the price of land. Men were always talk- 
ing about the price of land. So far as I could 
tell they were always saying the same thing. 
I believe that their talk affected my notions of 
the prairie, unprecocious though I was, and 
helped to make it the unromantic thing it had 
thus far seemed to me. A man could buy up 
miles of prairie — a whole landscape, in fact — at 
so much an acre, and write his name on a little 
strip of paper to pay for it all. I had seen it 
done ; and, while I admired the man, comparing 
his resources with the loose-rattling contents 
of my little iron bank, I couldn't help thinking 
less of the prairie, thus handed about as a chat- 
tel. All the triple-laid gold of a hillside of sun- 
flowers, or the generous waves of the slough- 
grass, could be transferred from man to man in 
a five-minute transaction. After I had seen it 
done, beauty seemed less an absolute thing 
than before. 

After the ride came the train, where we all 
cuddled down and slept for hours. And after 
the train and breakfast came — the City. 

"You'll be surprised to death,' ' said Arthur 
for the fourth time, as we emerged from the 



A STEPDAUGHTER OF THE PRAIRIE 71 

station hotel, our feelings in leash for the great 
experience. 

We had already been surprised, though we 
had not mentioned the fact, by certain peculiar 
flavors in the hotel breakfast, and by the diffi- 
culty of sitting down in a chair while it was be- 
ing pushed under us. We had looked with in- 
terest at the liquid called cream, and the solid 
called potatoes. They were novelties to us. But 
they were mere details, and we put them aside 
for the moment, to consider fully at a later time, 
and came out of the dining-room all alert for 
the world. We longed to be surprised, even to 
the point of spasms. 

"There's a policeman !" exclaimed Arthur, 
as we finally emerged on the street ; and Uncle 
Henry looked expectantly at us. 

We looked the policeman over. We had been 
familiar with his figure ever since we had had 
one in an early box of toys, and we had seen, 
first and last, some dozens of pictures of po- 
licemen, all of them exactly alike. This was 
undoubtedly a policeman. We recognized his 
well-filled blue suit and his supine majesty. 

"That thing he wears is a helmet,' ' said Ar- 



72 A STEPDAUGHTER OF THE PRAIRIE 

thur, "and that stick is his billy. It's awfully- 
heavy. ' ' 

As we had not been trained in the conven- 
tions of conversation, it did not occur to us to 
reply to the obvious, and we remained silent. 
A policeman was an interesting object, and his 
moveless grandeur was very impressive, but 
unless he would obligingly arrest some one be- 
fore our very eyes we saw nothing to say about 
him. 

They kindly passed over our silence as due to 
our rustic stupefaction, and we moved on. 

6 ' That building is fifteen stories high, ' ' said 
Uncle Henry respectfully, as we turned the 
corner ; and he led us across the street to where 
we could take in its full magnificence. 

"It's pretty high," we said, throwing appre- 
ciation into our voices, as Uncle Henry waited 
for our awed comment. But really it looked 
just as we had known it would. Having seen 
a one-story building, we could easily imagine a 
fifteen-story or even a hundred-story one, for 
that matter. It was merely a process of multi- 
plication, and our imaginations had been stimu- 
lated by a course in mental arithmetic. 



A STEPDAUGHTER OF THE PRAIRIE 73 

Well, details are embarrassing. Even now I 
don't like to go over the events of that day. 
Uncle Henry was most devoted, and Arthur 
was an indefatigable cicerone. If we did not 
see the whole of the impedimenta and artillery 
of the army of industry it was not his fault. 
He even dragged us off after dinner to see a 
park. Fancy showing a pathetic made park to 
country children, even prairie children. We 
did not think much of it. We saw buildings 
and buildings, and streets and streets, and fire 
boxes and letter boxes, and surface cars and 
elevated cars, and wonderful stores and a fine 
hotel and a fire station and elevators and the 
central post office and an opportune funeral and 
the Salvation Army and a boy that was beg- 
ging, actually, and a blind man and a sandwich 
man — and everything else worth seeing. And 
we had an ice-cream soda and saw part of a 
matinee vaudeville. 

But, on the whole, the day was not a success. 
Uncle Henry found us dull little stupids to play 
the guide to. He, I privately suspect, had seen 
himself in the role of a beneficent and well- 
informed fairy, showing off the city to us with 



74 A STEPDAUGHTER OF THE PRAIRIE 

urban toleration of our ignorance and amuse- 
ment at our excitement. But instead of being 
entertained — and indirectly flattered — by our 
wondering and ecstatic comment and deli- 
ciously amusing blunders, which he could re- 
peat to the people at home as illustrations of 
western ignorance, he found us stolid and in- 
articulate. We failed to wonder in the right 
place or we admired in the wrong place, and 
Arthur said over and over, "Well, you cer- 
tainly are queer kids ! ' ' 

Once when Uncle Henry met an acquaint- 
ance, and they talked apart a few minutes, I 
heard him ay, "Yes, it's surprising what a 
difference there is between city children and 

country children. Now, my Arthur " I 

was more inarticulate than ever when he re- 
joined us. 

But really we were not seeing such novelties 
as he supposed. For the most part we were 
merely identifying the material forms of things 
we had heard about and read about and seen 
pictured, all our little lives. We were delighted 
enough to see them, but we were not in the 
least surprised. They filled our expectations 



A STEPDAUGHTER OF THE PRAIRIE 75 

— or if they did not we thought it impolite to 
say so, as Uncle Henry took such a proprietary 
interest in them. But there was nothing much 
to say about them. So we merely looked and 
were ready to pass on. And no guide, not even 
one paid by the hour, would like that. 

The fact was, it was as much a disappoint- 
ment to me as it was to Uncle Henry. I don't 
know what I had expected, but I had thought 
things would be different. I suppose the mys- 
tery of the night ride was a bad preparation 
for the matter-of-factness of the city day. Per- 
haps, if Uncle Henry and Arthur had not 
known so much and rattled off so many facts 
and explanations, things would have gone bet- 
ter. But they didn't leave a single possibility 
unprovided for. When they got through, a 
street car was simply a street car, and an ele- 
vated road merely an elevated road — not a 
thing for strange, unknown people to go to 
strange, wonderful places on, for all sorts of 
unguessed purposes. Mysterious buildings 
changed before our very eyes to steel and brick 
and stone, and what went on within them be- 
came a negligible thing. 



76 A STEPDAUGHTER OF THE PRAIRIE 

But, on the other hand, there were the peo- 
ple, and no one conld tell us about them. I 
wished they could. What were trolleys and 
tall buildings and elevators? The crowd was 
the thing. I stumbled along, upheld by Uncle 
Henry's coercing hand. He thought my eyes 
were on store windows and street cars and 
beer wagons and such things, but they were not. 
Where were all the people going, and where did 
they belong, and who were they, and who lived 
at home with them, and what were they doing? 
Every one of them might belong to a kind of 
life I knew nothing about. When I stumbled 
or pulled loiteringly at Uncle Henry's over- 
taxed arm, it was usually because I was follow- 
ing some face of a quality I had never seen be- 
fore, or trying to catch flying bits of talk as 
speakers passed. This was the stuff that 
stories were made of — if I could only get at it. 
I was divided between rapture and poignant 
perplexity. The world was all there, but I 
could not touch it. 

A carriage stopped in the street, and a gen- 
tleman handsome enough to be anything came 
to it and talked deferentially to a lady inside. 



A STEPDAUGHTER OF THE PRAIRIE 77 

And to this very day I want to know what he 
was saying. Two ladies in wonderful dresses 
and more wonderful hats waited on a, corner 
for a car, and they talked so earnestly that 
they let their car pass — so I gathered from 
their gestures. And what were they talking 
about? And in another place a carriage drove 
up in a great hurry, and a man jumped out and 
dashed into a building, an uninteresting build- 
ing with nothing in the windows. But why was 
he in such a hurry! 

Once a lady who was visiting us had with 
her a copy of one of Mary J. Holmes's novels, 
and I surreptitiously began to read it. But 
before I had reached the end of the first chap- 
ter the lady departed and her novel with her, 
and I have never yet had a chance to finish it. 
It is a tragedy almost beyond parallel to have 
the full cup of a luscious novel snatched away 
from you when the first sip has barely passed 
your lips. Not all the other novels in the world 
will ever compensate for that lost one. That 
experience was multiplied a hundred times that 
day. No later assurance of the probable stu- 
pidity of those people and the flatness of their 



78 A STEPDAUGHTER OF THE PRAIRIE 

activity can ever console me for the things I did 
not learn. Why did that man hurry into that 
building? And what were the storified ladies 
talking about? I still want to know. 

But there was no answer to such questions. 
I was as much outside of things as I was on the 
prairie at home. I think I was glad when we 
were taken back to the gloomy, ugly station; 
and doubly glad when the train carried us 
away across the jolty, clanking, smoky railroad 
yards, and we finally left the city behind. We 
left Uncle Henry and Arthur, too, for they 
were going on east. Arthur's last words were, 
' ' But you just ought to see the New York Cen- 
tral !" 

Some time after midnight the conductor put 
us off the train at our own little station, hardly 
discernible in the dark — and so back along the 
roads, to find Felicia Hemans welcoming us 
and daylight in one raucous hurrah, and Maldy 
getting ready the earliest breakfast we had 
ever known. 

That second ride in the dark, with the faint 
color of dawn finally growing out of the gloom, 
appeared to drop a curtain over the day's ex- 



A STEPDAUGHTER OF THE PRAIRIE 79 

perience and shut it off into a space of its own. 
It seemed to be a thing that was completed for 
all time, with nothing following it. I meditated 
on the contradiction of things ; for lo, I seemed, 
as we rode across the prairie, to be coming 
back to the book universe, instead of turning 
my face away from it. One could see more in 
the city, but one could imagine more in the 
country. The city did not epitomize books, as I 
had thought it would — only newspapers and 
trade catalogs and advertisements, and other 
things that were really a waste of the noble art 
of print. I was no nearer my desired verse- 
world and story-world than I had been before. 
But somehow that ride helped to reestablish 
my faith in it. Even the sweet darkness of the 
prairie and the soft pink line of dawn gave an 
assurance of its reality, for that very dimness 
had a mystery and a presence that belonged 
to nothing I had seen that day. For the first 
time I found in me some love of the prairie. 



MY BOOK AND HEAET 

On the prairie one had time to read. I heard 
Arthur's mother say that there was so little 
time for children to read when they were going 
to school, and I wondered. I didn't see how 
there could be such a thing as not having time 
to read. You don't think about taking time to 
read — you just read. We thought of time only 
when we were hurrying through one book to get 
to another; for there was almost always an- 
other waiting and holding out a fascinating 
promise which hastened our progress toward 
it. And then it was so quiet on the prairie. 
The general whooping of life was so far away 
that it did not call us from books with the in- 
sistence of its noise. Its activity became his- 
tory or romance before it reached us. 

Arthur's mother said, too, that the days were 
so much longer at the Plantation than in town ; 
and that also made me wonder. But, of course, 
it would account for Arthur's not having time 

80 



A STEPDAUGHTER OF THE PRAIRIE 81 

to read. I was not strong on science, and I 
pictured the sun as rising at school time in the 
city and setting just as Arthur got home again. 
Certainly Arthur had not read anything except 
a few children's stories which we had left be- 
hind long since. We sometimes wondered that 
his parents were not ashamed of him. We 
tried him in every department of literature, 
and found him wanting everywhere. To him a 
poem was a piece to speak, and prose was 
something one found in the Fourth Eeader. 
If he had not kept us in place by his superior 
knowledge of the world, we might have become 
priggish and pharisaic over his limitations. 

But of course there was no reason why any- 
one should feel lofty over simple and natural 
indulgence in reading. The only wonder, if 
there was one, was that any person could exer- 
cise such self-restraint as Arthur did. As for 
us, there were the books and there were the 
long summer days and the long winter eve- 
nings. Why not read and read again? 

There were the books, to be sure. And by 
good fortune they were such as led us into the 
ways of literature. Of all libraries the most 



82 A STEPDAUGHTER OF THE PRAIRIE 

satisfying and the most lovable is not that ob- 
tained out of hand by one man in one period, 
but that which is made up of the accretions of 
years and even of generations. A real library 
can hardly be got by any man in one life; it 
takes the successive tastes of grandfather and 
father and son, with perhaps the happy inher- 
itance of books chosen by collateral members 
of the family. Such a library is full of sur- 
prises and by-paths, and even of suggestive 
gaps that stimulate desire. 

I suppose I say so because that is the kind 
of library the Plantation held. It was not a 
very large collection ; freighting books from the 
East in those days was too expensive. A book 
had to show reason why its passage should be 
paid. But, carefully limited as it was, such a 
library was not merely a library ; it was a fam- 
ily tree mentalized, a racial epitome, a record 
of ancestral mind and taste. Grandfather and 
even great-grandfather had chosen and worn 
the books, great-uncles and dead-and-gone 
cousins had thumbed and ruffled the leaves, 
tributary and confluent family lines had made 
contributions. Angular writing of genera- 



A STEPDAUGHTER OF THE PRAIRIE 83 

tions before ours appeared on fly-leaves and 
margins, along with the glossy labels of far- 
away book-sellers. Some of the children who 
visited us, like Arthur, did not think our li- 
brary looked attractive. The sober shelves had 
a look of brown, middle-aged respectability, 
very different from the enticing variegation of 
a shelf of new novels in their parti-colored 
dress, or so-called children's books, garish af- 
fronts to childish intelligence. Another ad- 
vantage of living on the prairie is that new 
books do not wander in every day, and that 
there is no public library. One has time to 
read a good book twice. 

The foundation of our library was laid by 
the austere taste of a New England great- 
grandfather and his evidently like-minded son ; 
the taste of a people who did not care for any 
nonsense. It is hard to believe that there ever 
was a time when people really read Cotton 
Mather and Roger "Williams and Histories of 
Redemption and Four-fold States, especially 
grown persons who could read what they liked. 
Even Charlotte Temple, doubtless a concession 
to frivolity on my grandfather's part, seemed 



84 A STEPDAUGHTER OF THE PRAIRIE 

to us to show a very rudimentary sense of what 
was entertaining. An inheritance from a 
Covenanter ancestor* lent moral support and 
sympathy to the New Englander's literary 
taste. From him came the various Lives of 
Cameronians and of Covenanters generally, the 
treasured copy of the Covenant, numerous Con- 
fessions of Faith, copiously and devotedly an- 
notated, a rich collection of sermons and let- 
ters, histories of all stages of Presbyterianism 
— between which and Royalist Scott we became 
hopelessly bewildered — and dear yellow old 
collections of Scotch poetry. He must have 
been a man worth knowing, that ancestor, with 
his love of songs and of sermons — his Tales of 
the Borders and his tattered Kilmeny and well- 
worn Rutherford's Letters. 

Then from some romantic feminine source — 
a great-aunt, I think — came volumes of early 
Victorian verse, with faint sentimental pencil 
lines on the margins, and an occasional 
' ' Sweet ! ' ' or ■ ' True ! ' ' in a genteel hand. From 
her, too, must have come the Ladies' Booh of 
Anecdotes and certain best-sellers of another 
time, now long past their day, like dried-up and 



A STEPDAUGHTER OF THE PRAIRIE 85 

passe toasts, such as Children of the Abbey 
and Alonzo and Melissa. We didn't have to 
open these books to know whose name we 
should find daintily set on the fly-leaf. They 
were small usually, with faded colored bind- 
ings and gold stamping. Lady hands had held 
them and slender pencils had marked them, and 
they had come to us unsmudged and un- 
thumbed. There was no likeness between them 
and the plain, shaky brown books of the Puri- 
tan or the Covenanter. 

Other books had wandered to us through 
other by-paths. There was a little group, only 
a shelfful, which always stood by itself, the 
scanty mental food of a young uncle — or was it 
a cousin? Whoever he was, he was not much 
talked of now, and we had a general impression 
that he had been a sort of ne 'er-do-well, if such 
a sober person as an uncle could be a ne 'er-do- 
well. But, anyway, he had been a dilettante 
youth who had passed away before he reached 
the period of settled-down taste, and had left, 
to fix his reputation forever, such signs of his 
judgment as N. P. Willis and Fanny Fern, and 
several highly colored Annuals, and novels 



86 A STEPDAUGHTER OF THE PRAIRIE 

whose once up-to-date flippancy was now an 
out-of-date flatness. Poor uncle or whoever 
he was! Beside his Puritan ancestor's collec- 
tion his looked garish indeed, and he never 
could return to correct the impression he con- 
tinued to make by his youthful following of 
fashion in reading. The shelf might have fur- 
nished a suggestive object lesson to the 
thoughtful grown-up, and made him wonder 
how his own library would look to the critic 
of a generation later, and whether it would be 
worth handing down to his heirs. 

Very different from these was the sweet 
maiden collection which my mother had 
brought with her to her new home and which 
still stood in her room, The Flower of the Fam- 
ily and A Garland of Verse, and Mrs. Hemans 
and Jean Ingelow and a Kempis and the Chris- 
tian Year and the Golden Treasury, and others. 
When, with chastened mind, I was spending an 
afternoon in retreat, I went to her room and 
read those books. 

And then, of course, there were my father's 
own volumes, gathered through all his years; 
books thoughtfully collected and soberly 



A STEPDAUGHTER OF THE PRAIRIE 87 

hoarded, as by a man who thought a good book 
a precious thing. There were few among them 
that had not won their way to place, and none 
— save the few forbidden ones — that could not 
safely be ours. A man with half a dozen young 
readers coming on does not choose his books 
lightly. 

All these, and others that I cannot account 
for now, were our range. There were not 
many among them all that we did not investi- 
gate, first and last. We smiled, in more sophis- 
ticated years, to think that there had been a 
time when we judged a book by a merely su- 
perficial standard, such as the attractiveness 
of its title or the amount of dialog it con- 
tained. But the introductory mistake we made 
as to the probable relative value of the solid 
paragraphs of Robinson Crusoe and the prom- 
ising pages of conversation in Sandford and 
Merton or the Rollo Books, for instance, taught 
us a salutary lesson. 

The fact is, we found, it is unwise to pass by 
any book without a thorough investigation. I 
shuddered later to think that I had made three 
separate attempts to read Ivarihoe before I 



88 A STEPDAUGHTER OF THE PRAIRIE 

could get past its initial lesson in linguistics 
and politics. And what if I had not made a 
fourth effort — with certain saltatory move- 
ments that took me past this barrier! For a 
long time we ignored the golden History of 
Granada, supposing it to be an ordinary his- 
tory, and the luscious Life of John Martin, 
bound in dull brown with plain lettering, which 
we had passed over as mere biography. Such 
mistakes as these made us wary. Diamonds 
might lurk anywhere. It behooved us to be up 
and looking. 

And look we did. I doubt if there was at 
last a single dramatic element left undiscovered 
in all our small library. The old books were 
of two classes generally : books whose soft yel- 
low pages with their frayed edges fell open of 
themselves, showing cleavage most notably at 
places which we at once knew must be the best ; 
and books with starchy, unhandled leaves and 
creaking, protesting backs; books which had 
kept an unbroken newness through all the gen- 
erations that had owned them. 

There was something pathetic, I thought at 
first, about an unread book, standing on a shelf 



A STEPDAUGHTER OF THE PRAIRIE 89 

in endless waiting, and offering its unused 
meaning year after year to unasking owners. 
I used to take one down occasionally and make 
an attempt to read it — like Sordello with his 
pitiful caryatides. But I generally found that 
there had been reason for its rejection by my 
predecessors. The ancestral literary taste was 
not to be despised, I found, as the result of my 
investigations, and I readily returned the stiff 
lines of The Pleasures of the Imagination and 
the moralities of Martin Tupper to their ac- 
customed repose. But there continued to be 
for me a wistful look about even the back of a 
neglected book. 

On the other hand, if a book were ragged and 
wobbly in its covers, that was reason enough 
for examining it. It had evidently been popu- 
lar and could probably show cause. It was so 
we found Pilgrim's Progress, a mere tatter of 
a book, and we never had reason to regret the 
time we spent on it. Until we were absolutely 
sure that a book was essays or science or the- 
ology or a footless stuff called philosophy, we 
gave it a fair chance. Even diaries and biogra- 
phies, for the judicious and persevering skip- 



90 A STEPDAUGHTER OF THE PRAIRIE 

per, have dramatic moments. All books, in our 
judgment, were to be tasted. 

Of course there were Dickens and Scott and 
Mrs. Whitney and beloved Miss Alcott. But 
reading them was like getting money out of a 
bank. The true searcher for gold finds it in 
the rough and in unassured places. There was 
real excitement in turning the pious leaves of 
the unpromising Life of James Renwick, with 
expectation of entertainment low, and then sud- 
denly finding him escaping across the moss- 
hags, his horse guided by a Power that evi- 
dently approved of his views on church polity, 
while the prelatical Claverhouse men in pursuit 
floundered up to their shoulders and gave up 
the chase. Such a finding as that stimulated 
us to make acquaintance with other Covenant- 
ers, men who lived a life of daring and risk 
and escape — or dramatic martyrdom — that put 
them in a class with Robinson Crusoe himself. 

Even in the dun-colored old History of the 
Covenanters there would suddenly appear, set 
in between dull acts of Parliament and unex- 
citing politics, a secret conventicle in the mist 
and the heather, where the excitement of 



A STEPDAUGHTER OF THE PRAIRIE 91 

hazard run must have compensated for the 
solemnity of paraphrase and sermon. And 
then would come in those Claverhouse men 
again, and the Presbyterians would drop to 
cover in the heather or bracken, except the few 
who were always taken and led away to the 
boot or the maiden — instruments we tried in 
vain to visualize or invent. 

Patches like this would enliven any history. 
We could not help regarding them as accidents 
in historical narrative, which left to itself 
would cling by nature to the dullness of acts 
of Parliament and the monotonous perform- 
ance of Whig and Tory. But, accident or not, 
such bits were too delightful for us to chance 
missing them, and led us to the examination of 
other histories in the hope that they, too, were 
enlivened with dramatic episodes. 

Nor were we unrewarded. The divorce trial 
of Katherine of Arragon and the simple ele- 
mental Henry neatly disposing of wife after 
wife; Luther meeting the devils on the roofs 
of Worms — so our confused imaginations syn- 
copated the affair; the adorable Mary, irre- 
sistible we didn't know why, Mary with her 



92 A STEPDAUGHTER OF THE PRAIRIE 

Rizzio and her Bothwell and her eternal way 
with her; Anne Boleyn with her royal lover, 
and her two small hands clasping her own slen- 
der neck; Catherine Douglas sacrificing her 
white arm for a bolt to the rude door to save 
the kingly James; the good-looking Charles 
stepping out through the wall to have his hand- 
some head cut off — episodes like these enriched 
the sparsely set pages of history and made the 
moments when we were bidden to read it quite 
tolerable. 

In fact, except the negligible classes I have 
named, there is scarcely any book that does not 
have something interesting in it. The whole 
art of being entertained lies in two things — in 
being a good skipper and in seeing things as 
they are. There is Pilgrim's Progress, for in- 
stance. However it may be for the pious or 
literary grown-up, there is no book that more 
invites skipping on the part of the discriminat- 
ing ten-year-old. The long array of Golden 
Texts and dialogued religion seems made to 
be skipped. But ah me, the Delectable Moun- 
tains and the House Beautiful — do you have 
such a rested feeling anywhere else in litera- 



A STEPDAUGHTER OF THE PRAIRIE 93 

ture? — and the country of Beulah and the Val- 
ley of the Shadow of Death ! Everything in the 
book could be seen as plain as day. Prudence 
and Piety and Charity looked like some pretty 
maids I had seen once at a hotel, and Mercy 
looked like the mild young wife of our doctor, 
and Christian looked like just any man. They 
were all such genuine flesh-and-blood that I 
could have pinched them. But that was no 
credit to either Bunyan or us. When you are 
ten things easily turn into flesh and blood. It 
doesn't matter much whether books are illus- 
trated or not. After you have shut them up 
once you can hardly remember whether the 
pictures were on the page or in your head. 

Foxe's Booh of Martyrs, however, was illus- 
trated. I don't suppose it would ever occur to 
any wise person selecting five hundred books or 
five yards of books or five hundred pounds of 
books for the juvenile, to include that gory 
chronicle among them. I am sure there is no 
warrant in pedagogical principles for suppos- 
ing that any normal child could be induced to 
read it. But we did, and more than once — 
whether on advice or not, I don't remember. 



94* A STEPDAUGHTER OF THE PRAIRIE 

What pleasure any youngster could find in that 
long panorama of flayings and fagots and rack- 
ings and blood and stern refusals to recant, I 
cannot surmise now. But we were so well ac- 
quainted with it that the martyr became for us 
a distinct type of person, like the gypsy or 
mover or robber, the sort of person whose 
function it was to have his head cut off blood- 
ily or to be hung on a pole upside down. 

As I say, the book was illustrated, with an 
innocent art that spared no detail and an in- 
congruity of martyrly expression that modified 
the horror even for us. The chubby bishop of 
Arethusa, seated aloft on a clothes basket, sug- 
gestive of the peaceful arts connected with the 
family washing, and gazing in round-eyed and 
bewildered perturbation at an approaching flock 
of something, whether bees or buzzards, I don't 
know ; a thickly- whiskered but knock-kneed per- 
secutor neatly removing Francis Gross's mus- 
cular tissue with an implement which looked 
like a milk- skimmer ; one of the seventy martyrs 
coyly dropping a corner of her round chin on 
the blade of the broad corn-knife that was cut- 
ting her head off; that was the sort of picture 



A STEPDAUGHTER OF THE PRAIRIE 95 

which illuminated religious fervor for us. I 
suppose we found a novel as well as a dramatic 
element in the suffering — a thing which lay 
entirely outside of our experience ; and enjoyed 
at the same time the opportunity for indigna- 
tion against the persecutors — a large, righteous 
sort of feeling. Anyway, we fell back on that 
book on many Sunday afternoons when public 
opinion appeared to demand that we read 
something appropriate to the season. It 
seemed to be a religious work. 

There is nothing in our later explorations 
among books that is comparable to the delight 
of these early searchings. The more undi- 
rected they were the better. Of course when 
They, who were supposed to know everything, 
gave us a book and bade us become ac- 
quainted with it we assumed that it must pos- 
sess some well-established merit, and set our- 
selves to find it. Sometimes we found it and 
sometimes we did not. There was Sandford 
and Merton, which profited by its enthusiastic 
introduction to us. I don't remember that any 
reason was offered for inflicting that book upon 
us, except that it contained useful information 



96 A STEPDAUGHTER OF THE PRAIRIE 

— no reason at all — and that our grandfather 
Johnson had had to read it when he was a boy. 
I leave it to any lover of real entertainment if 
either of these reasons was sufficient. I don't 
see how my grandfather's generation grew up 
with the incubus of that book upon them. It is 
a poor book that can 't be read more than once. 
But I really thought that I should rather forget 
how to read than follow a second time the mis- 
adventures of the dull Tommy or the noble ex- 
ample of the paragonic Harry. 

Afterward I read somewhere the life of this 
informational Mr. Day, and how he educated 
a girl to be his wife — by such means as those 
of the book, no doubt — and when she was all 
properly educated and ready she would not 
wear the clothes he prescribed and so would 
not do, and how three other young ladies in 
succession refused him, and I was glad of it. I 
wished forty young ladies had refused him and 
he had died of cumulative broken heart. 

That was the kind of book that might be im- 
posed on us when officious elders selected our 
reading. In spite of the generally accepted 
view of Their omniscience, I sometimes sus- 



A STEPDAUGHTER OF THE PRAIRIE 97 

pected them of offering us books which they 
had not read themselves, and never would read. 
Sandford and Merton seemed enough evidence 
of that. But generally such direction as we got 
was largely negative. There were certain 
books which we might not read — openly — but 
it was generally assumed that when we were 
reading we were safe. So we were left to the 
long joys of discovery of literature, joys that 
were incomparable and manifold. 

There is no other delight like that of finding 
something fine for yourself where no one has 
pointed it out to you. You may be fairly sure 
that in time all the substantial and sensible 
merits of literature will be shown you more or 
less forcibly, and that you will have an oppor- 
tunity to test them for yourself. But there 
may be a thousand shy or remote things that 
no one will ever tell you about. That is why 
it is wise to search widely and unflaggingly. 
One gets to have a sweet proprietary interest 
in bits of literature discovered for one's self. 
Sometimes the treasures are so rare that one 
does not tell anyone else about them at all. For 
me, I had a secret hoard of beauties that I did 



98 A STEPDAUGHTER OF THE PRAIRIE 

not discover even to John or Mary — Henry was 
quite out of the question, of course. In time 
these were taken from me by the annoying dis- 
covery that no end of people knew them al- 
ready, that they had even been vulgarized by 
common quoting. 

One day, in prowling through an unpromis- 
ing old gray book I found ' ' a green thought in 
a green shade. ' ' That was a moment ! I lived 
on the phrase for a day and returned to it for 
weeks afterward for sweet, aesthetic sips. 
When I lay on the grass under the box-elder 
tree and looked up through its rather scanty 
leaves, I used to say it over to myself and wait 
for an appropriate thought — which never came. 
For years I thought it was my verse and only 
mine. Who else would think of looking into an 
old gray book for it? To that I added from 
time to time such sister joys as "with the 
moon's beauty and the moon's soft pace." 
That was a good bit to say to myself when I 
leaned from the window at night, after saying 
my prayers, to take a last look at the sky and 
postpone for a stolen instant the moment of 
final retirement. 



A STEPDAUGHTER OF THE PRAIRIE 99 

I found that in a book of extracts. Books of 
extracts and quotations — the difference is that 
an extract is longer than a quotation — are ex- 
cellent good things for the discoverer of litera- 
ture. If you are taken with the sample you 
can hunt up the whole fabric and find many 
joys in that way. They are great books for 
tasting. So it was that I first discovered 
Lalla Rookh and the Songs of Seven. And 
while I was tracing the samples to their sources 
I might come upon other delights by the way 
that nothing had pointed me to. The excite- 
ment and happiness of exploration were end- 
less. To Columbus the tinsel joy of discover- 
ing America — my own discoveries for me! 
That thousands had already made them for 
themselves did not matter. And yet I did not 
show John and Mary everything I found. 

The corner of the Forbidden Books added a 
zest and a perilous excitement to our explora- 
tions. The grown-ups certainly had curious 
notions about what it was inadvisable for chil- 
dren to read. I read a good many of the For- 
bidden Books, almost all of them, in fact, and 
found nothing bad in them. Some of them I 



100 A STEPDAUGHTER OF THE PRAIRIE 

found merely dull and returned them unfin- 
ished. I tasted Balzac, for instance, but didn't 
like the taste. Of course in later years, with 
the tremendous knowledge gained by grown- 
upness, I should probably have coincided with 
Their view, but you have to know a good deal 
about badness in order to recognize it when you 
see it. If you are only young enough, you can 
read almost anything, skimming lightly and 
safely over unguessed depths of wickedness. It 
really was Ellen and the elders whose reading 
should have been restricted. 

But having books forbidden makes them irre- 
sistibly alluring, and adds the excitement of 
hazard to the reading of them. Did you never 
sneak a book away to read it, prudently slid- 
ing up the other books on the shelf so that no 
betraying gap might show? Did you never, 
for instance, read Romola under the bed in the 
spare bedroom, dividing your righteous con- 
demnation of Tito with your own conscientious 
scruples, and your fear for Romola 's safety 
with shivers lest you yourself be caught? Did 
you never make your way through Vanity Fair 
by cautious half-hour snatches, fearful every 



A STEPDAUGHTER OF THE PRAIRIE 101 

moment lest some one in authority should in- 
terrupt? 

There was one horrible day when I sought 
the tranquil though badly-lighted seclusion un- 
der the spare bed, forgetting that one of the 
frequent visiting preachers was sojourning 
with us. I had reached the third chapter of 
Children of the Abbey, thousands of miles 
away from bed springs and figured carpet, 
when the preacher entered. I had forgotten 
his existence. But there he was and there he 
stayed. He read and he wrote; he even prac- 
ticed a sermon — not much of a sermon, I 
thought. And all the while I, rolled to the very 
limits of my retreat, waited for him to go. 
What if he should, like another minister who 
once stayed with us, do without supper ! That 
was one of the things I was afraid of. The 
other was that he might pray. We wondered 
a good deal what the ministers did when they 
stayed in their rooms so much, and had de- 
cided that they spent the most of their time in 
vocalized devotion. At least that is what the 
preachers in the Lives did. We had even 
paused outside the door sometimes when no 



102 A STEPDAUGHTER OF THE PRAIRIE 

scrupulous elder was in sight, to listen for sug- 
gestive sounds from within. But it would have 
been one thing to hear him from outside and 
quite another to be shut in the room with him. 
I simply could not stand it if he prayed. It 
would be unthinkably embarrassing. And be- 
sides, his position of devotion might be an un- 
favorable one for me. 

But this preacher was apparently not of the 
praying kind. At least he did not use this op- 
portunity, but finally went off to the orchard 
to look for Red Junes, and I escaped. The 
only lesson I drew from that episode was not 
to frequent the spare room when we had com- 
pany. I finished Children of the Abbey in the 
wheat bin and got it back to the house undis- 
covered. 

It never occurred to us at that time that lit- 
erary quality had anything to do with the limi- 
tations laid on our reading. I was much puz- 
zled during my surreptitious perusal of Fair 
Women to account for the prejudice that ex- 
isted against it among the censors of our read- 
ing. We supposed that a book was forbidden 
on purely moral grounds, and were surprised 



A STEPDAUGHTER OF THE PRAIRIE 103 

and disappointed when we found no palpable 
wickedness in it. We always hoped to find in 
one of them some time an unrestricted view of 
villainy such as would entirely satisfy our hun- 
gry imaginations. We craved a novelty in ras- 
cality that would really startle us, but never 
found it. I don't know how old you are when 
you begin to discover Canons of Taste, or 
whether you discover them yourself or have 
them laid on you, like social conventions. But 
there is a pleasant time before you are aware 
of them and are still untrammeled and un- 
ashamed in all your verdicts. Then John Gil- 
pin is not funny, and We Are Seven is, and 
The Ancient Mariner is a nice, spooky, fairy 
tale, and Pilgrim's Progress is in the same 
class with Arabian Nights, and Little Women 
is about the best book ever written. An in- 
teresting book is an interesting book in what- 
ever company you find it. 

There is nothing that furnishes greater 
promise of continued satisfaction in life than 
to know that whatever happens you can always 
read. However other interests may fluctuate 
or fail, there are always books, and there is al- 



104 A STEPDAUGHTER OF THE PRAIRIE 

ways an interesting one if you only search long 
enough for it. It gives a sort of certainty to 
life, and an assurance of its continued likable- 
ness, to know that there need be no dull inter- 
stices in it. Games may flag, and brothers and 
sisters may have moments of slightly damaged 
amiability, but entertainment need not pause 
while there are still books to read. If there are 
no new ones you can always read David Cop- 
perfield again. 

The shaky old books were none the less 
shaky when we were through with them, espe- 
cially if we had forgotten them in the orchard 
or the cottonwood grove for a few days at a 
time. But the orchard was a good place in 
summer, I found. I found, too, that it was a 
good thing to disappear into it early in the 
afternoon before anyone had thought to say 
where was that child, and it really was time 
she was learning to sew or crochet or some- 
thing. I don't know why it doesn't tire your 
elbows or your back when you are ten to lie 
on the grass with a book in front of you for a 
whole afternoon. After you have passed an- 






A STEPDAUGHTER OF THE PRAIRIE 105 

other decade or two you don't care much for 
the position. 

Those orchard afternoons! When I estab- 
lished a pile of apples beside me and turned 
the first leaf of my book the sun was high above 
me. Then a minute or two passed, and some 
one was calling me, and the sun was almost 
down, and the apples were all gone. That was 
the only thing that surprised me, however. I 
had been in a far country and the lapse of time 
was only natural. 



THE VANITY OF EOMANCE 

On the whole I thought I did not care for a 
husband. It seemed a more desirable thing, 
even at a distant view, to leave the chances of 
life open. There was a finality about a hus- 
band that seemed to do away with other possi- 
bilities and define unalterably the road of the 
future. 

And that road of the future — what a way it 
was ! No one could tell yet where it might go, 
or what might happen on it. Sometimes I could 
hardly wait to see, and sometimes I was glad 
to wait and breathlessly push it farther from 
me while I wondered and wondered, and 
planned and planned. But the trouble is one 
cannot read about any kind of experience with- 
out wanting to try it. Everything in the world 
seems worth doing, for a while at least. That 
makes it a most irksome limitation to be only 
one person. Had I been five, four others and 
myself, we could amongst us have compassed 

106 



A STEPDAUGHTER OF THE PRAIRIE 107 

everything worth while. But to be only one 
person, hampered by sex conventions besides — 
it is a pitifully meager fate. That is why I 
early decided against matrimony as a career. 
It didn't seem to offer either excitement or 
celebrity, and at the same time it seemed to 
close the doors to all other experiences. I con- 
sidered the matter once and settled it. "Who 
had ever heard of a person celebrated as a suc- 
cessful wife? Nor could a married person be 
a heroine; in my reading, at least, there was 
no precedent for it. That is the same as saying 
that my stories were not very modern. So far 
as I knew, married people just lived and kept 
house — the last thing in the world to do. 

But, this point settled, the choice of all the 
world lay before me. Daily I dreamed ; I called 
it making up stories. At night after I went to 
bed, in long afternoons in the orchard, behind 
my geography at school, I composed my never- 
ending tales. In them I walked a path of 
splendor. Romance marked my way. For 
they were always about the great things the 
future was to bring me. It is a rich time, be- 
fore your fancy is hampered by any knowledge 



108 A STEPDAUGHTER OF THE PRAIRIE 

of practical conditions or probabilities, and is 
guided by desire and that alone. Sometimes I 
was to be a poet, sometimes a novelist or singer 
or scholar, sometimes rich, and beautiful be- 
yond even Tennyson's telling, sometimes a 
heroine with fine deeds to my credit, anon a 
mere philanthropist, modestly earning untold 
gratitude — but always I was to be great and 
celebrated, somehow, somewhere. The fact 
that I was unmusical, unpoetical, unscholarly, 
unbeautiful, and unclever, was a matter of pres- 
ent grief, but it in no wise curbed my imagina- 
tion. I was to be different in the future. For 
each career chosen I elaborately planned out 
every item with a care and precision worthy of 
a novelist. Little Ellie herself could not outdo 
me in faithful detail — only I put in no lover as 
yet, and I could see no point in Ellie and her 
foolish swan's nest. 

The constant element in all these variables 
was success, glorified success, the admiration 
of all observers, and the astonishment and hum- 
ble approval of my family. They were the ones 
it seemed most worth while to impress. To be 
sure, there were scattered seasons when family 



A STEPDAUGHTER OF THE PRAIRIE 109 

authority or lack of appreciation irked me, and 
I decided to get even by being merely a humble, 
devoted, dutiful soul, whose merit was discov- 
ered when it was too late, to the poignant regret 
of her unappreciative friends. I dwelt more on 
the poignant regret than on the devotion and 
duty. 

The too-open respectability of our family rec- 
ord seemed to preclude mystery or romance, 
and at times drove me to the luscious fancy that 
I was adopted ! Some one — the Queen of Eng- 
land preferably — might come up our drive al- 
most any day to claim me and take me away to 
my true sphere. I would be very gracious and 
really affectionate in taking leave of my humble 
foster-family, and send them a thousand dollars 
by return mail. Of course, when the next day 
I had decided to become a novelist and make a 
large fortune by my own absolutely unaided ef- 
forts, I was rather glad that the Queen had not 
come for me. But for the moment whatever 
dream lay in my small mind was as real as 
reality, and I went to bed nightly wondering 
when things were going to begin to happen. 
Sometimes they seemed unbearably slow. 



110 A STEPDAUGHTER OF THE PRAIRIE 

There was one great day in my mental his- 
tory. Up to that time I had thought quiet and 
some degree of solitude necessary for the carry- 
ing on of my stories. I could do it at school 
when I ought to be studying, but the chance was 
better on the road to and from school when I 
lagged behind the other children, or out in the 
orchard under the Eed June tree, or on the long 
drives with the grown-ups, when they talked 
away and paid no attention to me. The best 
time was after I was in bed and Maldy had 
taken the light away and told me to go straight 
to sleep. To go to sleep was rank waste ; sleep- 
ing was the last thing to consider doing unless 
one were sure of dreaming. But sleep-dreams 
were very unsatisfactory, because one forgot 
them or they broke off at the wrong point, 
or failed of probability, even to my mind. 
What I did was to turn my face to the window, 
where a maple tree made a lattice for the stars 
to shine through, snuggle down and begin on my 
story where I had left off last— unless some 
reading or happening of the day had set me on 
a new trail. 

But on the Great Day I learned something. 



A STEPDAUGHTER OF THE PRAIRIE 111 

In our well-disciplined Calvinistic family the 
working theory was that duty was the moral 
bread of life, and that no child was too small 
to have duties in proportion and to be required 
to do them. It was a most irksome theory. The 
Stern Lawgiver stalked unwelcome among us 
younglings and hampered us at undesired mo- 
ments. But for me, I wore her shackles lightly 
after this important day when, called at a most 
exciting moment of a story to finish some 
shirked towel-hemming, I found that I could 
carry on my absorbing fiction while my reluc- 
tant hands were toiling prosaically. What did 
it matter if my hands held a dish-towel and my 
needle was sticky, and if my thread knotted and 
became embarrassingly grimy? My real me 
was far away, doing tremendous things. No 
wonder it was a great day. From that time on, 
neither the presence of people nor occupation 
to which I should have given my mind, hindered 
me from weaving my airy fabric of the things 
to be desired. The moment current affairs 
ceased to be interesting, I was off on the path of 
experiences I hoped would come to pass. 

The effect of this on my practical education 



112 A STEPDAUGHTER OF THE PRAIRIE 

was disastrous. No future heroine ever brought 
on herself more present obloquy and reprimand. 
How can one remember what she has been sent 
to the cellar for, when she is enjoying a vision 
of herself receiving the plaudits and flowers of 
thousands on the opera stage? How can she 
remember which are young pansy plants and 
which are weeds, when she is planning what she 
would do if she found a robber in her room at 
night? How can she take care to make little 
stitches and keep the right distance from the 
edge and not pucker, when she is at the very 
critical moment of saving a train, like Kate 
Shelley, about whom poems had been written in 
the newspapers ? 

In such a scheme of life virtue was less a 
thing to be yearned for than was fame. Any- 
one could be good, or at least one could be good 
when one could not be anything else. Still, I 
was not sure that I ought to fabricate my 
stories on Sunday; it seemed too worldly an 
amusement, although the long church service 
did furnish an enticing opportunity. Then I 
thought of a way; I would make the story fit 
the occasion. So on Sundays, in the meager- 



A STEPDAUGHTER OF THE PRAIRIE 113 

looking, white-plastered little prairie church, 
while the dim old minister was preaching away 
into his whiskers, I saw myself as a missionary 
in heathen lands, as the pious subject of a little 
Sunday-school book, as a faithful little mother 
to my orphaned brothers and sisters. That 
idea would have interested John and Mary. 
Well, it is something to covet goodness even 
on Sundays. Sometimes the impulse comes 
less often than once a week. 

Then I wanted a companion in this absorbing 
life, or else I wanted to show off my inventive 
ability, I don't know which. Anyway, I tried 
to induct little Mary into my own joys. But 
Mary did not prove worthy. She wanted 
everything accounted for on a practical basis. 
She was so unimaginative as to ask where the 
old gentleman was coming from who was going 
to leave me a million dollars, or where were 
the signs of the artistic talent by which I was 
to leap to sudden fame. No one could confide 
an ambition to such incredulous ears. I gave 
her up. 

Then I tried Henry in one of his more pliant 
moods. There was no questioning his imagi- 



114 A STEPDAUGHTER OF THE PRAIRIE 

nation. He followed me promptly, he sug- 
gested new details, we found a place for him 
in the scheme and moved hand in hand to fame ; 
the structure grew nobly. But alas for the 
rarity of masculine faithfulness under the sun ! 
That very night, with the story warm in our 
minds, Henry crassly, insensately referred to it 
before the whole family. And then, when idly 
questioned, he, as if insensible to the delicate 
exotic quality of the thing he was handling and 
the intimate nature of the revelation, told it, 
jocularly crediting the whole thing to me. No 
conduct could have been baser, more uncom- 
radelike. To this hour I hope he will be pun- 
ished for it. Could I have passed away at that 
moment, with all those surreptitiously smiling 
ones about me, I should willingly have foregone 
all the coming true of all the dreams. But it 
taught me a bitter lesson. There is a point be- 
yond which no man can go. You may trust 
your friends with your money or your past, but 
with your ambitions and your dreams, no one. 
After that, like the pampered soul in the 
Palace of Art, I held my solemn mirth alone. 
Like the same soul, I sucked dry the orange of 



A STEPDAUGHTER OF THE PRAIRIE 115 

experience. I sampled all phases of life that 
looked interesting, from being cast away on a 
desert island, where I out-crusoed Crusoe in 
prodigies of timely ingenuity, to conducting a 
temperance campaign and convincing besotted 
but reasonable thousands that they should hate 
the bowl. There were no unhappy limits to 
possibility. I never had to look wistfully over 
the confining fence at an experience that I had 
blindly failed to choose. If any experience 
looked desirable I promptly appropriated it, at 
least until I had worn the details of it trite. 
Then I easily changed to another. No wonder 
I hesitated to limit my roving fancy to any 
such fixed condition as matrimony. 

As for the trifling factor that preceded or 
brought about the married state, that, or he, 
was quite negligible. No lover rode across the 
mirror of my inventions. That was the one 
thing that belonged strictly to a book, though 
everything else was transferable. I had not 
seen one in real life, nor yet conceived of one 
outside of print. Indeed I had not paid much 
attention to that element, even in fiction. Pure 
love-stories were carefully excluded from our 



116 A STEPDAUGHTER OF THE PRAIRIE 

reading, so far as might be, and romantic af- 
fection I had found a rather vague feature in 
the stories I had read. I was used, of course, 
to having heroes and heroines want to get mar- 
ried, just as they wanted money or an inher- 
itance, or the punishment of their enemies. 
There were only two objects in a story, so far 
as I had observed. One was that the hero 
should get what he wanted, whatever that 
might be ; and the other that the villain should 
be adequately and satisfactorily punished. If 
the hero wanted to get married — as I summed 
up the yearnings of the lover's passion — why, 
let him. I could follow the story of his impas- 
sioned strivings with faithful sympathy, since 
it was all in the story ; though why Ivanhoe, for 
example, was possessed with a desire to settle 
down uneventfully with Eowena, when he could 
have gone on and had further exciting adven- 
tures, I really couldn't see. But the concrete 
reward of love seemed to be as definite an ob- 
jective point as taking a castle or fighting in a 
tournament, and I was for success for the right 
man, whatever he might want. 

"We had tried, it is true, to work this element 



A STEPDAUGHTER OF THE PRAIRIE 117 

into the inventions of our endless games, but 
without much success. Mary was quite too 
small and too practical to take the role of 
heroine, and I was too unadaptable. I always 
insisted on the same form of proposal: "Will 
you be mine f ' ' Henry and John acknowledged 
that to be an orthodox form, but they thought 
something should be left to individual taste and 
personality. So the game always broke up at 
this point, and we entered on housekeeping re- 
lations in the playhouse without benefit of 
clergy. 

Our vagueness on the subject of the divine 
passion was only natural, after all. Scott is 
no instructor in such a matter, and even Dick- 
ens lacks definition. He scants his love-scenes 
shamefully, anyone will acknowledge. Practical 
sources of romantic information were few. We 
had never seen a wedding. Wedding-cards 
came from the East sometimes, and we han- 
dled them curiously, as the sign of something 
very remote, both in circumstance and in idea. 
But the actual committing of matrimony lay 
outside of our knowledge. We regarded it as 
the thing that happened in a story after all the 



118 A STEPDAUGHTER OF THE PRAIRIE 

real excitement was over and there was nothing 
more to expect. If we could have seen a live 
pair of lovers in actual operation, that depart- 
ment of life might have been illuminated for 
us. But all the grown-up people we knew were 
already sorted out into married couples, and 
ordinary married couples bore little trace now 
of past romantic excitement in their accom- 
plishment of matrimony. They might have 
been born married, so far as we could tell. Our 
father and mother, for instance — they seemed 
distinctly fond of each other, and yet we 
couldn't conceive of a time when they didn't 
have us. And we certainly would have been an 
impediment to courtship. Such was the status 
of romance with me until a certain June after- 
noon that marked a new emotional epoch. 

I had just finished the Legree section of Un- 
cle Tom's Cabin for the third time. The last 
comfortable shiver had died away up my spine, 
and still lying under the box-elder tree, with my 
elbows in the grass and my chin in my hands, I 
was wondering what to do next. It was then 
that I happened to see Ellen. 

There are vivid moments in one's acquaint- 



A STEPDAUGHTER OF THE PRAIRIE 119 

ance with people, even with members of one's 
own family, when their characters are suddenly 
illuminated with new light. So, as I say, I saw 
Ellen. I dropped my idly waving toes in the 
grass and sat up, to bring my mind to an ear- 
nest contemplation of something I had never 
seen in her before. Ellen was my oldest sister. 
For two years she had been back East in board- 
ing school, and she had now returned, a young 
lady, and I was adjusting myself to her as a 
new element in the family. At this moment 
she sat on the side of the hammock, and a 
Young Man stood in front of her. Young Men, 
I had begun to notice, had become rather fre- 
quent occurrences at our house of late, and 
they always fell to Ellen to entertain. As I 
idly watched them I became aware of the thing 
that made me sit up. 

To begin with, it broke upon me for the first 
time that Ellen was pretty. Even to the unpre- 
possessed eye of a younger sister that was now 
apparent. It had never occurred to me before, 
for a very simple and logical reason. There 
had been nothing in my reading to suggest that 
beauty was anything less than an absolute qual- 



120 A STEPDAUGHTER OF THE PRAIRIE 

ity. A young lady was absolutely beautiful and 
fit to figure in a novel, like Eowena and Re- 
becca, or she was not beautiful and no heroine 
at all. Now it dawned on me that there were 
degrees of beauty and that Ellen had one of 
them, if not more. 

This afternoon she wore a pretty pink dress, 
one that had come from the East with her, and 
had an airiness and ruffliness unknown to my 
useful frocks. She sat with her knees crossed 
— I was not allowed to do that — and the atti- 
tude brought the tip of a shiny slipper into 
view, especially when she gave a little push to 
set the hammock in motion. Her chin was 
tilted a bit sidewise. Anon she looked up at 
the young man and then dropped her eyelashes 
and looked at the rosette on her slipper, and 
gave a little kick — at least if I had done it it 
would have been a kick, if ever so little — that 
set her ruffles fluttering. When the wind blew 
her fluffy hair about her face she let it stay for 
a moment and then put it back, not too se- 
curely, with an airy motion that brought her 
bare elbow into view for a slow minute. No 
wonder I looked at her. When she combed my 



A STEPDAUGHTER OF THE PRAIRIE 121 

hair in the morning, a process entered upon 
with reluctance on both sides, she didn't tip her 
chin or flutter her eyelashes or look up with a 
sudden half-smile. A truth abruptly took my 
breath away : Ellen was coquetting. 

I had not dreamed of such a literary possi- 
bility as this within my own family. I slowly 
pushed myself backward until I reached the 
box-elder for support, and contemplatively 
gathered up my knees under my chin. At a 
bound Ellen had passed from being a mere 
member of the family, with a big sister's un- 
warranted assumption of authority and trou- 
blesome notions as to my deportment, to the 
dignity of a young lady, and one who could 
make a young man look like that. My gaze 
wandered to the veranda where my father and 
mother were sitting. Their attitude and man- 
ner indicated distinctly amicable relations, but 
they certainly differed from those of Ellen and 
the young man. It slowly came to me that pos- 
sibly there was something very enjoyable in 
this situation of Ellen's. Maybe there was 
more in the whole matter than I had supposed. 

Presently, as no new phenomena seemed to 



122 A STEPDAUGHTER OF THE PRAIRIE 

promise at the hammock, I arose and walked 
meditatively to the house. I slipped into El- 
len's room, she being safely engaged for the 
moment, and looked at myself in her glass, the 
glass of young-ladyhood. I didn't need its evi- 
dence to tell me that I was not beautiful, but 
what I was looking for was not actuality but 
promise. With the aid of Ellen's grown-up 
hairpins I secured my hair on the top of my 
head — my poor, straight, slippery hair that lost 
so many hair-ribbons. The result certainly 
was an improvement. Ellen 's perfectly beauti- 
ful summer hat, all drooping and pink and 
flowery, lay on the bed. I put it on. Then I 
looked about me, and a drawer partly open 
beckoned. Vanity lay within it, in the shape of 
a lacy, fluffy boa-thing, which I promptly 
clapped about my undeniably skinny neck. 
Then I looked in the glass again, with optimis- 
tic eye and hopeful forecast of the years. Even 
I, unbiased though generously sympathetic, 
thought I saw a far-away promise. Perhaps 
when I was a young lady! — who could tell! 

That night I introduced an entirely novel ele- 
ment into my story: a — lover. I wish I could 



A STEPDAUGHTER OF THE PRAIRIE 123 

write it in smal] type. He was a very nebulous 
creation at first, and even my own attitude and 
action wanted definition. The whole relation 
was tentative, awaiting fuller information. 
And that information was not so easy to come 
by as one might suppose. I kept a careful eye 
on Ellen. But Ellen never seemed to go be- 
yond the most elementary conduct. She didn't 
do anything but look sidewise and upwise and 
downwise and say little saucy things that left a 
heavy burden of response on the young men. 
I cast about for further illustrations, but no 
one in sight was in a position to furnish them. 
I wanted a real love scene, rich in detail and 
lavish in phrase. 

I fell back on novels, where one ought to be 
able to learn anything about life. But it was 
surprising how they had slighted the love 
scenes. Jane Austen was so modest in her 
shy syncopating of them; and Scott never 
seemed to have time for them, because he had 
to hurry off to start another fight; and Thack- 
eray gave only little samples, expecting you to 
know the rest; and Jane Eyre was too intel- 
lectual for me. As for the mild juvenile books 



124 A STEPDAUGHTER OF THE PRAIRIE 

given us by relatives, they confined themselves 
to didactic issues, with a bare hint of future 
romance thrown in at the end as a sort of apol- 
ogy for previous dullness. Our reading was 
entirely too well guarded. Why had no one in- 
troduced us to the current Chambers or Hitch- 
ens of the time, whoever he was! Family dis- 
cipline, even personal honor, will not stand 
everything. I looked at the shelves of the For- 
bidden Books once too often, and then I fell. 
The Forbiden Books make a whole chapter, 
which cannot be given here. They proved my 
tree of good and evil — and indifferent. But I 
learned why they were forbidden and I learned 
other things. Chiefly I learned what I wanted 
to know. 

So far as may lie in the ten-year-old I ap- 
plied it. The romance throve apace. I soon 
passed Ellen, wondering why she contented 
herself with her pointless, incipient affairs 
when she might have a real, full-flavored one. 
Mere amusement was a slight object. I sighed 
for dramatic results. Never had the resources 
about me seemed so limited. 

But at last arrived the real chance, the op- 



A STEPDAUGHTER OF THE PRAIRIE 125 

portunity of the seeker of romance. There 
came out of the East a young lady cousin to 
visit, and then presently a young man she was 
engaged to marry, obligingly invited to spend 
a few days at the Plantation. To be married 
was a small thing, but to be engaged — that was 
romantic. I should have preferred to have 
them just at the point of getting engaged, but 
this would do. All the small imagination of 
me sat up to watch. Something crept through 
the atmosphere of the house, a mingled amuse- 
ment and sympathy, and an alertness to guard 
against surprises and awkward situations. 

For me, I forgot my own affair in my excite- 
ment over this. Think of having a novel 
brought and put down under your very nose! 
Ellen faded into unimportance. My own ad- 
mirer held to a thread of existence, but an at- 
tenuated one. When I really found out new 
details I could revive him. Frequently chidden 
though I was, politeness was almost beyond 
possibility. I wanted to stare and strain my 
ears to listen. Unless under strict orders, I 
hung always in the near distance, shy but 
eager. If I could only see them when there was 



126 A STEPDAUGHTER OF THE PRAIRIE 

no one around ! There must be interesting mo- 
ments that were practically lost to the world. 

Then, beyond my wildest hopes, a chance 
came. I was up in the biggest Maiden's Blush 
tree eating an apple when I saw them coming. 
I always called them the lovers to myself. I 
can't tell what an element it put into life to 
know that at any hour of the day I might walk 
into one of the everyday rooms of the house, 
never so hallowed before, and find a pair of 
lovers. At this moment they were— well, I 
won't say what they were doing, but at the 
time I noted it as an item. It was what I had 
searched for in Miss Austen and failed to find. 
But that was not all. They came right up to 
the tree, not like normal people to look for ap- 
ples, but to sit down in the soft, branchy grass 
right beneath me. There never was a more 
awkward or more delightful situation. Of 
course I knew I should go away, but what could 
I do? I leave it to anyone if I was to blame. 
There was no moment from the time they came 
in sight when I could have made my presence 
known without mortification on both sides. It 
seemed to be distinctly the part of a lady to 



A STEPDAUGHTER OF THE PRAIRIE 127 

keep still when she was up a tree, and it would 
embarrass the people below to know that she 
was there. Anyway, I am not telling, even 
now, and I should not if I were urged, what 
they said — still less what they did. 

But there were drawbacks in the situation. 
No one need think I was enjoying it in full com- 
fort, in spite of the dramatic intensity of the 
moment. They came upon me just as I was 
changing my position in the tree, and the 
Samothracian Nike herself is not more tired 
than I was before I had a chance to move. I 
held my unfinished apple in one hand. I dared 
not eat it, I had no pocket, and for the moment 
no lap. "With my other hand I had to cling to 
a crotch above my head. There was room for 
only one foot in the crotch where I was sup- 
porting myself, and of course I could not 
change. 

How would you like to cling with one hand 
to a branch of an apple tree, while you listened 
to the platitudes of affection — addressed to 
some one else? Would it give you any thrills 
to learn the real evincements of passion, while 
your right foot was being pinched in a crotch 



128 A STEPDAUGHTER OF THE PRAIRIE 

and your other hung at large, heavy and un- 
supported, and your thumb was being slowly 
paralyzed as it clutched the slippery core of an 
apple? Wouldn't such unfitting circumstances 
affect anyone's sympathetic appreciation? 

Anyway, it was apparent to me now that I 
had overestimated the literary and dramatic 
value of such a scene as was going on below 
me. The language was far below my expecta- 
tions. I could think of better myself. There 
was a good deal of repetition of phrasing and 
what I took for lack of originality. In fact, as 
my arm began to ache, I thought it all sounded 
rather silly — the worse the ache, the more fool- 
ish the dialogue. I hadn't thought much of 
"ownest own," even when I found it in Maud, 
and I thought less of it when I heard it said. 
As for the action — well, I was a little like Jane 
Austen myself. I looked the other way the 
most of the time. I shouldn't have cared to be 
either of them. The whole situation had evi- 
dently been distinctly overrated. 

They seemed to have been there a week. My 
arm ached, my thumb was tired, my foot was 
cramped, my other foot was numb — I almost 



A STEPDAUGHTER OP THE PRAIRIE 129 

wanted to cry. Things below me were getting 
duller and duller. I was wondering how it 
would do to get down deliberately and walk 
away in a dignified manner. Then all at once 
everything happened. Henry and a bumble- 
bee precipitated the tragic result. 

The bumble-bee nearly destroyed my already 
doubtful poise by buzzing viciously around my 
head. Then he lighted on the rapidly brown- 
ing surface of my apple and remained there in 
ominous quiet, approaching his fuzzy black- 
and-yellow self steadily nearer the tip of my 
thumb. I watched him in awful fear. When 
he touched my thumb I should scream, I knew. 
While this horror was pending Henry ap- 
peared on the scene at the other end of the 
vista enclosed by apple-trees. He saw me on 
my perch, but not the absorbed lovers beneath, 
and emitted a shrill, brotherly "Hi!" by way 
of salutation. At the very same moment the 
bee reached out a scraggly leg for a feeler, se- 
cured footing, and deliberately drew himself 
over on my thumb. I did scream — who could 
have helped it? Moreover, I flung the apple 
and slid precipitately and recklessly from the 



130 A STEPDAUGHTER OF THE PRAIRIE 

tree, landing at the very feet of the lovers, who 
had sprung up at Henry's call. There, a mass 
of aches and jar and mortification, I remained 
a moment. They looked at me, I looked at 
their feet; Henry, a happy outsider, looked at 
us all. Then I rose and walked away. But you 
know how your back feels when you are walk- 
ing away. 

If it had not been for Henry the affair would 
not have mattered, for I know the lovers would 
not have mentioned it. But Henry, again to 
the shame of the sex, told. First, he followed 
me to the house, pestering me all the way with 
questions and surmises and deridings. I took 
refuge in hauteur. There is nothing else to do 
when one seems to be in the wrong. If I had 
gratified Henry's masculine curiosity he would 
probably have entered into league with me, and 
there, except for the lasting effects of disillu- 
sionment, the matter might have ended. But 
my haughty silence drove him into virtuous in- 
dignation at my breach of hospitality, and for 
the honor of the family he mentioned the occur- 
rence to Them. Then followed a series of men- 
tionings. Everybody mentioned it to me. My 



A STEPDAUGHTER OF THE PRAIRIE 131 

mother mentioned it reluctantly, my father 
jocularly, a visiting grandparent solemnly, El- 
len with spicy indignation. She thought that I 
ought to apologize, but my mother said no. I 
don't know where the lovers spent the rest of 
the afternoon, for no one saw them again until 
supper- time. I didn't think I wanted any sup- 
per, but I was sent for and brought in, with 
lagging steps and painful shame on my brow. 
I think the shame was chiefly for a lost ideal, 
however, for I certainly was in the tree first. 
But everybody talked about Mark Twain all 
through the meal. 

That night I said a reluctant but irrevocable 
farewell to the attenuated lover. He was very 
passionate and woe-begone, and he did credit 
to his kind by using beautiful language. He 
might have used more, but I went to sleep in 
the midst of it. The next morning, while weed- 
ing the verbena bed, I entered on a new career 
as a rancher in the far West. I would run a 
large ranch — with great profit — all alone, and 
I would have about thirty men, and boss them 
all myself. 



A GEEEN THOUGHT 

It all began in a perfectly natural way. 
Henry and I were first engaged in the quiet 
and innocuous, though unassthetic, amusement 
of seeing how far we could stick our tongues 
out, and whose tongue, when thus projected, 
could be brought to the finest point. Henry 
outclassed me — by virtue of his greater matur- 
ity, I chose to think. He said he could see this 
fine tip he had achieved, and he certainly could 
almost touch his nose with it. I was pro- 
foundly chagrined, but I covered my mortifica- 
tion as best I could by using my now well-lim- 
bered tongue to imply that this sort of pre- 
eminence was of a very undesirable quality, 
anyway, and to draw some rather unpleasant 
parallels. Henry made a retort involving a 
personal allusion which had nothing to do with 
the occasion, but was all the more annoying. 
Our moment of pleasant emulation seemed 

132 



A STEPDAUGHTER OP THE PRAIRIE IBS 

likely to pass into one of acrimonious differ- 
ence. 

But just at this point Henry's eye happened 
to fall upon the brimming plate of fly-poison 
which Maldy had placed on a window-sill to 
beguile the gluttonous fly. In its lake of deadly 
water floated dark-gray squares of fly-paper, 
enticingly spread with brown sugar for pur- 
poses of allurement, but in reality exuding cer- 
tain death. At least Maldy cherished the notion 
that they did. Henry was struck with an idea 
which for the moment eclipsed disputation. 

' 'I dare you to see how near you can come 
to that with your tongue without touching it," 
he said. 

Now there were two reasons why I should 
have met this with either silent reproof or vir- 
tuous refusal. We were forbidden always by 
Maldy to "near ourselves" to her poison 
plates or to "have any doings" with them. 
And we were expressly forbidden by the high- 
est authorities either to offer "dares" or to 
take them. Ever since the day when I had at- 
tempted to stand on one foot on the ridge of the 
granary roof while Henry counted five hun- 



134 A STEPDAUGHTER OF THE PRAIRIE 

dred, and had failed ignominiously and dan- 
gerously, " daring' ' had been nnder a ban for 
ns. Henry should not have dared me now, and 
I should not have accepted the challenge. But 
one who bears daily and hourly the obloquy of 
not being a boy is especially sensitive on points 
of honor and courage. 

I bent over the plate and experimentally 
measured the distance. Then I had a second 
thought. 

"You're afraid to do it yourself,' ' I said. 

"I'm not, either. You go ahead and do it 
first." 

I was aware of an inconsistency in this, but 
one can't be all the time pointing out its illogi- 
calities to masculinity, so I said nothing more. 
I approached a cautious and oscillating tongue 
to the mixture. Then Henry, remarking that I 
had not come within a mile of it, did the same. 
He did seem to outdo me — again because of his 
larger proportions, I was sure. My blood was 
up. Henry never forgot it when he beat me at 
anything. Once more I bent over the plate, 
advancing a sensitive and reluctant tongue-tip 
nearer and nearer the deadly surface. The 



A STEPDAUGHTER OF THE PRAIRIE lbv 

suggestive opportunity was too great a tempta- 
tion to Henry — him of the creative imagina- 
tion. He suddenly " bobbed' ' my head on the 
back, and down went nose and chin and out- 
reaching tongue into the noisome stuff. More- 
over, my sudden impact with the plate knocked 
it off the window sill and its contents splashed 
darkly over the floor. 

With great presence of mind I remembered 
that I must not close my mouth or risk swal- 
lowing any of the deadly liquid. I snatched 
Henry's handkerchief, usually scorned for its 
complexion, and hastily wiped all the sub- 
merged portion. I didn't know how rapidly the 
poison would act, but the instinct of seK-pres- 
ervation bade me ward off the final moment as 
long as possible. There was not the slightest 
doubt, however, that my end was only a matter 
of brief time and that a very few minutes 
would probably see the tragedy. 

I gazed at Henry in a sort of acute stupor, 
and he blinked at me in return, overwhelmed 
at the result of a perfectly natural act. 

In spite of everything, I could not help being 
aware of the dramatic value of the situation as 



138 A STEPDAUGHTER OF THE PRAIRIE 

say anything adequate it did not seem worth 
while to express myself at all. But, of course, 
I could not accept his implied apology for poi- 
soning me. 

Henry felt in his pockets and took another 
thought. 

"Have a peppermint f" he suggested cor- 
dially. 

Again I shook my head and turned my eyes 
on the window. Henry weighed the peppermint 
in his fingers a moment and then ate it himself. 

Somewhat cheered by the naturalness of the 
act, he came back to normal, and said, "I'll bet 
it won't hurt at all." 

This was insulting. I wouldn't fail to die 
now for anything. 

An empty pause followed. My mother came 
through the room. I had been hoping that she 
would. That chance would afford a natural 
way of breaking the news. 

But all she said was, "Close your mouth, 
dear. That isn't nice." 

And she went out. 

That was the last straw. I had been suppos- 
ing that my mother would feel the situation in- 



A STEPDAUGHTER OF THE PRAIRIE 139 

stinctively, as she always did. Her impercep- 
tion was a disappointment. I had already be- 
gun to take a sort of poignant enjoyment out of 
a vision I was rapidly constructing of a final 
scene, with all the family present, and the re- 
pentant Maldy and Henry receiving the cold 
shoulders of all the others. Evidently I should 
have to reconstruct that gratifying view. I 
closed my mouth with a snap, and took up my 
sunbonnet, a convention of dress which I ig- 
nored as often as possible. Henry rose with a 
relieved air, pleased that the unusual and em- 
barrassing situation had come to an end. 

"Want to get out the pony?" he asked so- 
ciably. 

But I said impassively, "No," and went on 
my way. 

There didn't seem to be any use in dying if 
one weren't going to get any more out of it 
than this. And still I didn't like to give up the 
idea. Anyway, I was sure I was going to die, 
whether I wanted to or not. I would just have 
to make the most of it on my own account, and 
have it, like other large experiences, all to my- 
self. One more possibility remained. My fa- 



138 A STEPDAUGHTER OF THE PRAIRIE 

say anything adequate it did not seem worth 
while to express myself at all. But, of course, 
I could not accept his implied apology for poi- 
soning me. 

Henry felt in his pockets and took another 
thought. 

"Have a peppermint ?" he suggested cor- 
dially. 

Again I shook my head and turned my eyes 
on the window. Henry weighed the peppermint 
in his fingers a moment and then ate it himself. 

Somewhat cheered by the naturalness of the 
act, he came back to normal, and said, "111 bet 
it won't hurt at all." 

This was insulting. I wouldn't fail to die 
now for anything. 

An empty pause followed. My mother came 
through the room. I had been hoping that she 
would. That chance would afford a natural 
way of breaking the news. 

But all she said was, "Close your mouth, 
dear. That isn't nice." 

And she went out. 

That was the last straw. I had been suppos- 
ing that my mother would feel the situation in- 



A STEPDAUGHTER OF THE PRAIRIE 139 

stinctively, as she always did. Her impercep- 
tion was a disappointment. I had already be- 
gun to take a sort of poignant enjoyment out of 
a vision I was rapidly constructing of a final 
scene, with all the family present, and the re- 
pentant Maldy and Henry receiving the cold 
shoulders of all the others. Evidently I should 
have to reconstruct that gratifying view. I 
closed my mouth with a snap, and took up my 
sunbonnet, a convention of dress which I ig- 
nored as often as possible. Henry rose with a 
relieved air, pleased that the unusual and em- 
barrassing situation had come to an end. 

"Want to get out the pony?" he asked so- 
ciably. 

But I said impassively, "No," and went on 
my way. 

There didn't seem to be any use in dying if 
one weren't going to get any more out of it 
than this. And still I didn 't like to give up the 
idea. Anyway, I was sure I was going to die, 
whether I wanted to or not. I would just have 
to make the most of it on my own account, and 
have it, like other large experiences, all to my- 
self. One more possibility remained. My fa- 



140 A STEPDAUGHTER OF THE PRAIRIE 

ther was coming toward the house, and I di- 
rected my steps so as to cross his path. He 
ought at least to have a chance on such an occa- 
sion as this. But all he did was to say, notic- 
ing the direction in which I seemed to be going, 
" Don't eat any of those cherries yet, daughter. 
They won't be ripe enough for another week." 

I had to wait a moment before I could say 
my obedient "Yes, sir." And there was so 
much that I might have said if I could have 
brought myself to do it! This was more than 
disappointment. It was a blow. I could have 
shed tears had not pride forbidden. To have 
it thought that I was after green cherries when 
I already had fly-poison in my system ! It was 
my first really profound trial of having a great 
experience belittled, and it cut deep. 

I wandered out to where the mover was bur- 
ied and sat down. I didn't choose the spot, but 
it seemed to lie in my way, and I paused to 
consider its appropriateness as a place for 
meditation. This was our nearest approach to 
knowledge of a graveyard, but it had always 
seemed inadequate in every way, and quite de- 
void of sentimental suggestion. The real 



A STEPDAUGHTER OF THE PRAIRIE 141 

pathos of the forgotten grave on a stranger's 
land seemed lost on everyone except my 
mother, who sent us to put flowers on it on 
Memorial Day, and had a man renew the 
wooden slab from time to time. But I think 
my father rather regretted the kindliness 
which had allowed it to be placed there. Scat- 
tered bits of blue grass from the carefully cher- 
ished growth on the lawn struggled with the 
prairie grass which still held these outskirts, 
and a spare yellow blossom of Indian blood- 
root, as we erroneously called it, lent a scanty 
bit of grace of its kind. But the atmosphere of 
the spot was too commonplace to be effective. 
We children had raced by it too often to have 
any feeling connected with it at all, any more 
than with any other place. I looked at it now 
with a vague notion of sympathy, but for the 
moment I was more interested in dying than 
in being dead. 

So, finding nothing companionable here, I 
rose and wandered on down the road. One of 
the men passed me, driving on a hay-rack, and 
I caught on behind and balanced myself neatly, 
though abstractedly, on the projecting end of 



142 A STEPDAUGHTER OF THE PRAIRIE 

the reach. We jolted along down to the farm 
gate and up the road a little way. Then the 
man turned into a field. It was only a wheat- 
field, where no entertainment promised, or 
solace for a doomed one, so I jumped off and 
stopped on the road. 

I didn't know what I wanted to do next. The 
lack of sympathy and of understanding which 
had been shown me within the last hour gave 
me a vague feeling of detachment from my 
family and from everything else. I didn't see 
anything to do out on the road, but at the same 
time I didn't see anything to do anywhere. I 
looked up and down along the line of yellow 
wagon-track, with the sparse prairie-grass and 
immigrating weeds forming its border. The 
road toward town and the more thickly-settled 
country to the east of us was quite familiar to 
me in all its scanty detail, and now promised 
no new interest. In the other direction it led 
away, past my father's land and past an un- 
painted, rust-streaked farmhouse or two, and 
then on across a piece of open prairie. I had 
heard my father and other men complain be- 
cause its eastern owners did not have this land 



A STEPDAUGHTER OF THE PRAIRIE 143 

broken up and settled, but I did not know how 
extensive it was, and I had never been at all 
curious about it or what lay beyond it, for I 
had no great faith in its possibilities. 

But when one is being shaken out of relation- 
ship to all normal things by a new experience, 
one prefers the unknown to the known. So, 
without any special choosing, I began to loiter 
along the road to the prairie in a large indif- 
ference to coming results. I heard the creak 
and rattle of a wagon behind me and settled 
my pace to a steady trudge, so that I might 
seem to have business on the highway. The 
wagon came nearer, overtook me, passed me, 
and I looked up, to see that it was an emigrant 
wagon, with the dusty, weathered canvas top 
and the bony, tired team that always belonged 
with the emigrant wagon, and the usual dog 
under the wagon and the extra horse nibbling 
along behind. 

We were expressly forbidden to have any- 
thing to do with the movers ; but what is law to 
one set apart as I was then ? I promptly caught 
on behind, holding to the edge of the feed-box 
which was always attached to the back of a 



144 A STEPDAUGHTER OF THE PRAIRIE 

mover-wagon. The dog sniffed at me a little, 
but he was such a limp, skinny dog that I ven- 
tured to kick at him haughtily, and he curved 
himself sideways and slunk up nearer to the 
horses and said nothing more about it. The 
blank canvas cover showed no eye watching 
me, and the heavy wagon moved stolidly along 
as if following a dull purpose of its own. It 
became rather amusing to think that I was 
making use of it, and its unseen owners did not 
even know that I was there. Merely keeping 
up with the slow horses did not take all my 
energy and, forgetting my precarious physical 
condition, I hopped on one foot and then on the 
other and jumped up to try to see in through 
the canvas, and hooked my elbows over the edge 
of the feed-box and dragged my toes in the 
dust, looking over my shoulder to see what 
sort of track I was making. I began to have a 
pretty good time. 

I really meant to quit and go back home 
soon, for, after all, the entertainment of this 
was easily exhausted. But all at once a voice 
above me said, "Want a ride, little girl?" and 
there was a mover- woman looking at me 



A STEPDAUGHTER OF THE PRAIRIE 145 

through the opening in the canvas at the back. 

Somewhat to my own surprise I promptly 
answered, "Yes." 

I should hardly have supposed that I would 
venture to do so, but having made the daring 
decision I rather respected myself for my 
courage and stood by it. The wagon stopped 
with a slow creak and somebody held back a 
flap of the canvas at the side, while I climbed 
up by means of the wheel and the clumsy brake, 
and effected an entrance between the wobbly 
hoops that supported the cover. I was very 
prim and sedate as I scrambled in, head first, 
and took a seat on the pile of bedding the 
woman pointed me to, but inwardly I was all 
agog. This was the most exciting thing that 
had happened to me for many a day — more so 
even than the fly-poison. 

I naturally had a momentary feeling of tri- 
umph over Henry as I smoothed down my skirt 
and placed my feet carefully to avoid putting 
them into any of the utensils which were top- 
pling about. I had a fleeting thought of the 
effectiveness with which I would tell him about 
it, a vision which made it desirable to live to 



146 A STEPDAUGHTER OF THE PRAIRIE 

return home. The movers and the mover- 
wagons had always had a mystery that be- 
longed to no other people or things we knew. 
They were so strange, in their eternal going 
and going, carrying all their possessions with 
them as they moved, like people without the 
ordinary ties of life. We had often tried to get 
a glimpse into the dim well of their wagons, 
but had never succeeded to our satisfaction. 

And now the chance was bestowed on me — 
not on Henry or John. I tried to hold my curi- 
osity in leash as I looked about me, so as not 
to see everything at once and thus gloss over 
the effect. I fixed my attention on one thing 
at a time, slowly staring at each object — from 
the lank, hairy man on the seat in front, to 
the mangy gray cat sleeping on the bag of 
corn-meal at the end of the wagon-bed — while 
the woman on her part stared at me. 

I had never seen so many things, it seemed 
to me. All the necessaries of living — if one 
wanted to live under these conditions — had 
been thrown together into this narrow, low- 
arched space. The mussy bedding where I was 
perched, and the trunk where the woman sat 



A STEPDAUGHTER OF THE PRAIRIE 147 

holding the baby, and the box where the lit- 
tle boy lay asleep, were only the substructure 
or nuclei for bundles and boxes and bags and 
rolls, all more or less dilapidated, and dis- 
closing commonplace and uninviting contents, 
like side-meat or dried beef or soiled clothes. 
Among those were other articles, no less com- 
monplace — old shoes and pans and a jug or two 
and a tin wash-basin and a skillet bearing 
traces of recent dinner. Things hung from 
the canvas cover and menaced our heads as 
they swung about. A boot- jack lay among the 
other objects, and I wondered if it were really 
a necessary article to take along on such a trip. 
All the time I was looking the mover-woman 
was looking at me. She sat opposite me, her 
toes touching mine, although I tried to screw 
away as far as possible. She had a brown 
face and little winking black eyes, and she wore 
a limp, gray calico dress. She wanted to know 
a great many things. I had never met any- 
one with so amazing an appetite for unmeaning 
facts. She wanted to know my name and 
where I lived, and whether my pa and ma were 
both living, and how many brothers and sisters 



148 A STEPDAUGHTER OF THE PRAIRIE 

I had and their order of succession, and how 
much land my pa had and whether it was all 
paid for or had a mortgage on it, and whether 
he had made the money himself or had a leg- 
acy — she pronounced it legacy and I didn't 
know what she meant, but said no anyway — 
and where my pa and ma lived before they 
came here, and whether they liked it here, and 
what was the price of land, and whether my 
ma had right smart of chickens this year, and 
whether we ate our fries or sold them. She 
felt the texture of my gingham dress between 
her crooked finger and thumb and asked how 
much it was a yard, and if my ma made it, and 
if she had the pattern of my sunbonnet, and if 
I could cook, and if I had pieced a quilt. 

That was only a part of what she asked me. 
Sometimes her phrases were strange to me, 
but I felt bound to answer anyway. I won- 
dered, in an uneasy way, whether she were po- 
lite. And, unlike most grown-ups who had con- 
versed with me, she seemed to expect an an- 
swer to every question and made no allowance 
for either shyness or ignorance. When she 
talked she forgot to keep the flies off the baby, 



A STEPDAUGHTER OF THE PRAIRIE 149 

and they buzzed about its poor little eyes and 
mouth. The little boy had gone to sleep in 
the midst of eating a cold pancake spread with 
molasses, and the uneaten and forgotten half 
had dropped from his sleepy fingers and lay 
on the quilt beside him. It, too, as well as his 
molasses-streaked little face, was visited by 
many flies, crawling stickily on their besmeared 
legs. 

My curiosity about movers was waning. It 
did not seem now as if there could be any- 
thing interesting about people like these. Even 
the Pucketts were more likable. They told me 
things instead of always asking questions. I 
had wanted tremendously to ask the woman 
about herself, but I didn't know how to begin. 
And, after all, it didn't seem worth while to 
find out about a woman who didn't keep the 
flies off her children. I felt very uncomfort- 
able in telling how many acres my father had 
and how many dresses I had myself; but how 
could I help answering her when she stopped 
and looked at me with her bright black eyes 
and worked her mouth in that nervous way? 

I didn't know what to do. Home had sud- 



150 A STEPDAUGHTER OF THE PRAIRIE 

denly become very attractive. I had had chance 
dreams sometimes of riding off in a mover- 
wagon to a land of new experience, but I never 
could have imagined that the unknown con- 
tents of the wagon included flies and unwashed 
skillets and women who worked their mouths 
that way and asked so many questions. I found 
nothing bookish or romantic in it. I wished 
I were back home, but I didn't know how to 
get away. 

The slouching man on the wagon- seat sud- 
denly helped me by asking abruptly, ' ' How fur 
you goin', sis?" 

I raised the flap of the cover and looked out. 
We had passed far beyond the last of the 
dreary farmhouses, and straight before me, 
to the south, lay the open prairie. There was 
nothing else in view, house or fence or road. 
But I said promptly, "I want to get out right 
here." 

And, without waiting even for the man to 
bring his slow horses to a stop, I was out, with 
my foot on the brake, and jumped to the 
ground. Both man and woman looked after me 
curiously. I paused to say politely, "Thank 



A STEPDAUGHTER OF THE PRAIRIE 151 

you very much for the ride," and then set off 
straight into the prairie, as if I had urgent 
business there. As soon as the wagon was out 
of sight I would turn around and follow the 
road toward home, now grown desirable, poi- 
son or no poison. 

The road here lay along a side-hill, and in 
front of me the prairie sloped up for a few 
rods, to the hill-top. I walked straight up the 
little ascent, so conscious of looks following 
me that I scarcely noticed what was before me 
until I had dipped over the crest of the hill. 
Then, out of sight of the wagon, and relieved 
of the embarrassment of watching eyes, I 
stopped suddenly and began to see. 

For a moment I could do nothing but see. I 
scarcely breathed or consciously felt. I only 
looked. A long, long, irregular valley lay be- 
fore me, with hill-slopes cutting down into it 
occasionally from each side. It all spread out 
in gentle curves, with soft risings and slow 
descents, and it was all, all clothed in the rare 
full green of the prairie-grass, which lay over 
the hill-tops and deepened into the valleys, and 
made every line and curve of the landscape 



152 A STEPDAUGHTER OF THE PRAIRIE 

soft with grace and willingly tender. The 
south wind came up into my face as I stood. It 
seemed to be a-work enriching all I saw. It 
made the grass buoyant with windy ripples on 
its green surface. It bent the blades curve- 
wise, until the sun glinted on their sides and 
the hills shone in places with gold in their 
green. Down in the hollow, where the rich 
slough-grass grew high, it made deep waves, 
with lovely shadings from pale to dark. It 
died away softly to a mere stirring and then 
came back with a sudden joyful gust, and min- 
gled rhythmic movement with the sweet quiet 
of all that lay before me. 

An occasional flower raised its head: not 
many, only enough to enliven the color of the 
grass. There were the red sweet-william and 
the prairie-pea and the wild verbena, and 
others whose names I did not know, and never 
would know, since they went away with the 
prairie and never came back. Here and there 
the green was dotted with sturdy " nigger- 
heads,' ' with their rich mahogany centers and 
faintly pink fringes. 

When at last I stirred from my little trance 



A STEPDAUGHTER OF THE PRAIRIE 153 

and drew a long happy breath of absorption, 
my hand dropped on one of these as I stood 
there, and without looking at it I clasped the 
whole top in my small fist, squeezing the pric- 
kles of the cushiony center hard against the 
sensitive place in my palm. I knew the nigger- 
head well. It had neither romance nor mys- 
tery, and was as unsympathetic a creation as 
could go by the name of flower. But now its 
familiarity and its uncomfortable prickliness, 
as I stood holding it, seemed to form a tether 
to all the practical familiar things outside of 
this green vista. And this subconsciousness 
of other things made all that was before me 
seem the more exquisite. But soon I loosed 
my hold on it and moved a little farther down 
the slope. There again I stood to look and 
look, following curve after curve of the green, 
where it stretched off to the south, rising over 
a hill and dipping into a valley, and finally 
climbing a last slope to reach the mysterious 
thing that was the horizon line. 

I can't tell what strangeness lay in the line 
of wonder where the blue of the sky met the 
green of the hills. It was a mystery which 



154 A STEPDAUGHTER OF THE PRAIRIE 

far transcended in remoteness and promise any 
pot of gold of any childish tradition. That 
line itself held my attention. I had never be- 
fore found myself where I could follow the 
full sweep of it all round. Now I revolved 
slowly, tracing the long ellipse which inclosed 
the narrow valley, lifting itself over the crest 
of a hill or dropping into a soft curve at the 
head of a draw. The completeness* of the line 
fascinated me and I followed it round twice. I 
had never imagined it thus unbroken. I looked 
from the green to the blue and back again, and 
then at the fine definition of line where they 
met. 

For once I had no wonder as to what lay 
beyond that line, in either the green or the blue. 
The completeness and simplicity of what the 
horizon bounded set it off into a world by itself 
— a whole world, but so simple. And I was 
the only person in it. 

I had never before been alone in any such 
degree as this. To be sure, there had been 
pleasant afternoons in the orchard, and sur- 
reptitious hours in the granary or barn-loft, 
in company with a forbidden book. But that 



A STEPDAUGHTER OF THE PRAIRIE 155 

was not complete isolation. At any moment 
some one might call me ; or Henry or John, or 
both of them, might appear. Brothers have an 
energetic pervasiveness which makes any re- 
tirement insecure. A possibility, if not an ac- 
tuality, intruded on every such moment and 
interfered with absolute solitude. 

But here was a real aloneness, a solitude 
that was almost tangible, and — I discovered — 
an exquisite, an adorable thing. It made every- 
thing mine in a way I had never known before 
and couldn't realize completely enough for my 
satisfaction now. Even my self seemed more 
mine than it ever had at those times when some 
one might break in at any moment with an out- 
side demand upon me. I dropped down into 
the grass, forgetting all about my intention 
of going home. "A green thought' ' — I began 
to myself, for there is great pleasure in apply- 
ing a bit of poetry when there is no one else 
around. "A green thought' ' — But the rest of 
the phrase would not fit, and I had to let po- 
etry lapse for the time and merely look and 
listen, allowing the prairie to define itself. 

A sort of noiseless sound lived through the 



156 A STEPDAUGHTER OF THE PRAIRIE 

stillness, a sound which had no beginning, and 
which could never have an ending, one would 
think. It was made up of everything there — 
the wind and the grass and the faintly sound- 
ing water in the tiny hidden creek among 
slough-grass, and all the little lives among the 
green growth. I could almost believe, as I 
raised my eyes, that the softly-departing clouds 
had a part in it, so gentle and continuous was 
the sound. It seemed to be just a tender vo- 
calization of mere living. When a bird's call 
dropped into it sometimes it was only a phrase 
that melted into all the rest. 

Listening seemed only to make looking all 
the more intent. This was a landscape, for this 
moment at least, completely satisfying. Here 
was no great variety to draw the eye from de- 
tail to detail in a way that interfered with 
mood and forbade absorption. It was a whole 
eyeful, of only the two elements, the green 
of the grass and the blue of the sky. Either 
would have been enough for man 's desire. The 
two were riches beyond grasping. The sky was 
noble, now absolutely cloudless, a great half- 
globe of blue. It deepened from the lighter 



A STEPDAUGHTER OF THE PRAIRIE 157 

rim, where it seemed to come near, at the hori- 
zon, to the exquisite remoteness straight above 
me, where the bine became bluer the longer 
I looked into it. Golden-blue I called it to my- 
self as I dwelt upon it. 

I sprang to my feet and ran, my sunbonnet 
thrown back on my shoulders, so that I might 
feel the moving softness of the south wind in 
my face, and my arms spread wide as if to 
grasp all I saw. If anyone had been there 
to see me I could not have done it. But for 
once a world was my own. The wind seemed 
to be bringing the grass toward me, in a con- 
stant motion, and I ran to meet it. I ran and 
ran, in a sort of ecstasy of all I realized of 
the place, the prairie wind in my hair, the 
prairie-grass about my feet, the prairie sun in 
my eyes. Every minute was an adventure in 
life. 

There is no time in a place like that. After 
a while I began to notice that the sunlight, slop- 
ing down the western hill, was catching the tops 
of the grasses instead of penetrating among 
them. Then there came a little indistinctness 



158 A STEPDAUGHTER OF THE PRAIRIE 

on the horizon line and a milky haziness in 
the farther end of the valley. But I pnt off 
thinking of the meaning of these things or de- 
ciding what I should do next. It seemed to me 
that if I went out of this place I could never 
come back. This day was different from all 
other days. Home and everything else were 
remote from this valley of grasses. 

A shout — two shouts — broke across the con- 
tinuity of sweet sound in my ears. I looked 
behind me and saw two figures on horseback, 
one on the edge of the hill-top and a smaller 
one nearer, moving toward me. They were my 
father and Henry, both standing in their stir- 
rups and scanning the landscape. My first im- 
pulse was to keep still, and I sat unreplying. 
But Henry had not helped to hunt cattle on 
the prairie for nothing. He turned and 
whistled shrilly to my father, who settled down 
in his saddle and waited, while Henry came 
dashing up to me. Relief was plainly evident 
in his face, but he was not too much absorbed 
to put the pony through a mild imitation of 
bucking as he approached. Indignation sue- 



A STEPDAUGHTER OF THE PRAIRIE 159 

ceeding to anxiety was apparent in his tone 
as he demanded, 

"What in Sam are you doing out here?" 

"I thought I would take a walk," I an- 
swered with quiet dignity as I rose and shook 
out the skirt of my dress. 

"Well, you'd better walk back home for a 
walk, and it's four miles." 

It was plainly a relief to Henry to find me 
on the wrong side again. I surmised that the 
story of the fly-poison had been divulged, and 
found my own poise. With calm assurance I 
ignored him and walked straight up to where 
my father waited. 

He said only, "All right, daughter !" and 
drew me up on the horse behind him, and we 
cantered off home, Henry and the pony trailing 
along in the rear. 

I didn't look back as we went along. But 
I laid my cheek up against my father's shoul- 
der, as I held fast to him, and shut my eyes. 
And I could still see and see and see the mov- 
ing green of the prairie grass and the golden- 
blue of the sky. 



THE PATH OF LEAENING 

We could go to school by either of two ways. 
We could follow the drive down to the gate and 
take the road east for nearly a quarter of a 
mile and then turn south for a mile, at the end 
of which, where the section roads crossed, we 
should find the schoolhouse. Taking this way 
we would go along between barbed-wire fences, 
bordered with a shaving of scant prairie grass, 
and when we got to the top of one hill we would 
see another just like it before us. The advan- 
tages of this way were almost entirely social. 
Other children came and went along the road 
and we had the pleasure of exchanging views 
on current topics with them — they knew a great 
deal that we did not know — and of getting tags 
at successive gates. The scanty traffic of the 
road afforded varied interest, too, as well as 
a chance of rides with the good-natured drivers 
who overtook us. Many different kinds of men 

160 



A STEPDAUGHTER OF THE PRAIRIE 161 

went along that road, but there was rarely one 
who, if he had room at all to spare or any 
horse-strength, did not pull up when he was 
beside us, with a "Whoa" and a push on the 
creaking brake, and a cordial "Want a ride?" 
— the word we had been waiting for. If it did 
not come he was a mean thing and the boys 
made demonstrations in the rear of the wagon 
to illustrate their opinion. 

The social intercourse of the road had an 
added attraction because, as we did not usually 
take that way, we were regarded by the others 
as company of a sort, and had the advantage 
of their hospitality. We took the road when it 
was wet weather, or in winter when the snow 
was deep or soft, or when some impulse of 
sociability led us to walk home with the other 
children. At other times we cut down through 
the orchard, — a very convenient thing to do at 
the right season — and then along a farm-road 
beside a cornfield, then over the half-mile fence, 
and finally across a quarter-section of original 
prairie, still unbroken. That way was a half- 
mile shorter than the other and we were en- 
couraged to take it in suitable weather, for one 



162 A STEPDAUGHTER OF THE PRAIRIE 

of the vague or unuttered becauses of which 
grown-ups had always an endless store in mind. 

Aside from its convenience this path offered 
many allurements. It was surprising that we 
reached school at all, there was so much to see 
along the way. The orchard itself — from the 
time when the burnished mahogany of its tops 
changed to the faint rosiness of the closed buds 
and then to the cool pink of the open blos- 
soms, and we breathed hard and deep all the 
way through it to get all possible of this en- 
riching air, until the day when the last wagon 
had driven around to gather up the "down 
apples' ' — offered us a hundred reasons for 
staying along the way. If nothing else delayed 
us, we — Mary and I, that is, not the boys — 
must take a bouquet for the teacher or for 
the home decoration of our desks, where the 
stems were thrust precariously into a topply 
bottle or into the shallow depths of the inkwell. 
The bouquet came from a Ben Davis or Lim- 
bertwig tree, though; the most reckless person 
would not sacrifice a Jonathan or Red June 
possibility. 

The orchard once passed, we sped along 



A STEPDAUGHTER OF THE PRAIRIE 163 

pretty rapidly by the milder attractions of the 
cornfield and the farm-road, unless a butcher- 
bird on wire-fence or hedge-tree, or a harmless 
blue-racer, or a toiling family of tumble-bugs 
made us pause. No one has written a book 
about tumble-bugs, although they are much 
more interesting than bees. If a snake were 
certainly harmless, Henry and John conscien- 
tiously killed it, even at the risk of tardiness. 
If it bore the dreadful tradition of being deadly 
poisonous, they let it escape. We should have 
liked one of those new-fashioned schools where 
the pupils arrive at their own sweet will, as 
welcome at eleven-thirty as at nine. We never 
found a teacher of that charming attitude of 
mind. Ours always had a predilection for keep- 
ing us after school — or worse still at recess — 
to make up delinquencies, or making us write 
our names in a poena list on the blackboard. 
One discerning teacher made Henry write out 
the family list — knowing doubtless that within 
the family circle vicarious punishment does 
not long remain merely vicarious. 

Beyond the cornfield a barb-wire fence 
waited to be crossed. Anyone who has crossed 



164 A STEPDAUGHTER OF THE PRAIRIE 

a barb-wire fence, at least anyone who wears 
the garments of civilization, knows what ex- 
igencies and problems that offers. But after 
the fence came the stretch of prairie grass. 
Half the flavor of going to that country school 
would have been lost had we not had the ex- 
perience of crossing the wild grass in the 
mornings and evenings. That made a frame 
into which all the events of the day were set. 
Early summer mornings when the grass was 
only shoe high, soft and springy under foot 
and deliciously green, and the meadow-larks' 
calls dotted its quiet here and there, and we 
couldn 't help, however good our intention, dart- 
ing out of our way for just a minute to pluck 
a violet or a wild verbena, or a horse-pipe to 
take apart and stick together again; June 
mornings when the sweet wild strawberries col- 
ored the southward sloping hillsides and we 
barely escaped being late to school, our fingers 
and lips telling the tale of our foraging, even 
at that; September mornings when we found 
bulrushes ripe brown in the slough our path 
skirted, and chased each other with stiff, dry 
bristles of jimson weed; late autumn mornings 



A STEPDAUGHTER OF THE PRAIRIE 165 

when the tardy sunrise reddened all the lovely 
pink in the drying bunches of prairie grass, 
even while the frost lay on the yellow upper 
blades, and we raced with the wild tumble- 
weeds, and reached school all prickly with 
broken bits of tickle grass secreted in unreach- 
able places among our garments ; autumn even- 
ings, when all the grass lay pale under a dead 
gray sky and the strange cry of the fleeing 
wild geese came down to us from far up in 
the grayness, and we sped along home to a 
warm supper and a cozy indoors ; sunny winter 
days, with the grass crisp under foot and a 
bright blue sky curving over the rose and buff 
of the prairie — or else over acres of light snow, 
smooth and unbroken save where a man had 
been sent along to make a path for us; and 
then early spring again, and the wild geese 
going back, joyful this time we thought, and 
the floating V of the wild ducks, and the green 
creeping up from the roots of the grasses, and 
the sharp, satisfying smell of burning corn- 
stalks in the air — these and a thousand other 
things formed the experiences which led us 
up to the door of the schoolhouse in the morn- 



166 A STEPDAUGHTER OF THE PRAIRIE 

ing and caught us up there again in the even- 
ing, when we had finished quips and pungent 
courtesies with the other children at the school- 
house door and set off on our own road. 

The schoolhouse itself differed from the hun- 
dreds that have appeared in literature, in that 
it had not a single romantic element in its con- 
struction or surroundings. Its little square 
yard was enclosed by a smooth wire fence and 
the moth-eaten remnants of an osage orange 
hedge, and was set out with a few cottonwoods 
and box-elders, still small. A long hitching- 
rack, the bark all worn away from the poles 
by the teeth of "mully-grubbing" horses and 
the feet of young acrobats, surrounded it, and 
a stile allowed us to cross the fence — of more 
use for social purposes, however, than for this, 
since no one would wait to cross a stile when 
it took only an instant to roll under the fence. 
The schoolhouse sat by the road and I suppose 
it could be called a ragged beggar sunning, 
since the shade was scanty and it was never 
all in repair at once. It was of the general 
proportions of a Greek temple, but the resem- 
blance to a Greek temple was remote. It bris- 



A STEPDAUGHTER OF THE PRAIRIE 167 

tied fiercely with lightning-rods, a sign of the 
successful loquacity of some agent or of the 
scientific faith of the school directors. And 
there was a covered well-house at the side of 
the yard. 

The well-house was mainly a show, however. 
For when the rope was not broken the well 
needed cleaning — for reasons frankly explained 
by the children — and when the water was drink- 
able the windlass-handle was gone or the bucket 
was staved in. These things did not matter, 
however. It would have been a great pity if 
the well had been always usable, because then 
we could not have brought the water from the 
Browns' well, half a quarter down the road. 
A journey to the Browns' was a rare excur- 
sion, especially for us smaller children, since 
the big boys and girls were likely to arrogate 
the privilege entirely to themselves. The 
Browns had not only a well, but a loom where 
a grandmother worked, weaving rag-carpet, 
and a cider-mill and a sorgum-press and a 
leach, trickling off lye for soft soap. There 
was always reason for hanging around to 
watch some interesting operation. The Browns 



168 A STEPDAUGHTER OF THE PRAIRIE 

made sauerkraut too, and had a smokehouse, 
and there was always something going on there 
which did not occur at our house, and which 
added to the joy of going for water. 

We drank a great deal of water, I believe. 
There was scarcely an hour on a spring day 
when some public-spirited one was not offering 
to pass the water or to fetch a fresh bucket 
from the Browns ' well. The ceremony of pass- 
ing the water added some of the charms of 
social intercourse to our academic pursuits. 
It was almost like serving afternoon tea. The 
passer put on little graces and manners and 
took the opportunity to exchange persiflage, 
sometimes involving a sly liquid retort, with 
the passees. We made it a point to show our 
fastidiousness by drinking as close to the han- 
dle of the dipper as possible, a spot which was 
supposed to be sequestered. Nine-tenths of 
us drank from that place. 

As it seems to me now, the elements of this 
section of our education consisted of the fol- 
lowing things: slate-rags, the Fifth Reader, 
notes, passing the water, headmarks, what the 
big girls said, Blackman and a torn dress, 



A STEPDAUGHTER OF THE PRAIRIE 169 

spilled ink and pokeberry substitute, the big 
boys, apples, staying in, speaking pieces on 
Friday, cube root, the dinner-bucket, geogra- 
phy — the book, not the science — partial pay- 
ments, chronological recapitulations. I sup- 
pose we learned a few other things, but these 
are all I remember. They are the projecting 
mountain-tops above the general mist of edu- 
cation. Being educated is a hazy sort of thing 
anyway. 

As to the slate-rag, the least said the soonest 
mended. But no object connected with our 
early intellectual development stands more 
clearly before my mental vision than that slate- 
rag — a fabric in dull grayish black, with an ac- 
companying odor of Araby — and the small vial 
of water which all housewifely little girls af- 
fected. I can't claim that I was housewifely, 
but I was easily made emulous in any line ; and 
in fact there are many purposes not domestic 
to which water may be put. So I, too, had my 
little bottle of water. 

In a jocular or vindictive mood, you filled 
your bottle to the brim and then, after you had 
reached your seat, you put your thumb on the 



170 A STEPDAUGHTER OF THE PRAIRIE 

mouth, turned casually in the direction of some 
one deserving such an attention, and pressed 
down your thumb. A simple law of physics 
took care of the result — though not always of 
the consequences. That was one of the advan- 
tages of using a bottle instead of keeping water 
in the ink-well — where we never kept ink; the 
teachers were too cautious for that. There 
were children who did not rise to the plane of 
owning bottles of water at all, but used a con- 
venient natural resource. And there were some 
who did not have slate-rags but used their 
sleeves. But on the other hand there were 
priggish little girls, now doubtless high in the 
profession of domestic science, who flaunted 
their pride in the number and size and shade 
of their slate-rags, to a disgusting degree. 

I suppose there was a time in the life of 
every slate-rag when it was white and dry and 
odorless. But that was an intimation of im- 
mortality early forgotten. Doubtless, by this 
time, every Board of Health has forbidden 
them entirely or else required daily fumigation. 
I generally had Augusta Horlocher (pro- 
nounced Highlocker) for a seatmate. Seat- 



A STEPDAUGHTER OF THE PRAIRIE 171 

mateship, I may say in passing, has many ele- 
ments of matrimony, and like it requires mu- 
tual forbearance and complementary virtues. 
Augusta was a domestic soul who spent more 
time in washing up the desk and putting my 
things over on my own side than she did in 
learning definitions. When Augusta emptied 
the water-bottle it was always for a worthy 
purpose. I can't say the same for myself, but 
I helped her — having got permission to com- 
municate — with complex fractions. Poor Au- 
gusta never got beyond decimals. She washed 
her slate assiduously, but between times she 
never could get the answer. 

I hardly know why it is the Fifth, of all the 
Eeaders, which I distinguish in memory, except 
that the Reader we were interested in was never 
the one out of which we were at the time sup- 
posedly learning to read and the contents of 
which were already tiresomely familiar, but 
one ahead of that, which we borrowed from the 
big girls to read at our desks. The Fifth 
Reader was in advance of us longer then any 
of the others, so, of course, I knew it the best. 
There was a Sixth Reader, we had heard, but 



172 A STEPDAUGHTER OF THE PRAIRIE 

it was like a digamma or an ideal; no one had 
ever really seen one. Even the big girls never 
reached it. 

Learning to read meant learning to read 
aloud. It didn't make any difference whether 
we learned to get the meaning from a " selec- 
tion' ' by reading it to ourselves. The thing 
was to be able to pronounce the words out loud 
and to give the definitions at the bottom of the 
page. There were two rules for reading. One 
was to let your voice fall at the end of a sen- 
tence and not to read over a comma ; the other 
was to read all the words in italics very loud, 
those in capitals fortissimo. That was a rule 
we could appreciate. There was a result to 
which definite measurement could be applied. 
In the Fourth Reader was a soft little poem 
which ended with a tender epitaph, printed in 
small capitals ; we came out strong on that epi- 
taph. When we read in concert, as we were 
fond of doing, for reasons which the sociologist 
and pedagogist know, one could have heard 
"SOMEBODY'S DARLING LIES BUKIED 
HERE" a quarter of a mile away. 

Did you ever get a note in school? — from 



A STEPDAUGHTER OF THE PRAIRIE 173 

a boy?— from a big boy? I suppose there are 
other experiences in life that are comparable 
to this, but certainly there is nothing else at 
that time which combines the same elements, 
dramatic, embarrassing, gratifying, triumph- 
ant, delicious, queer. Not that there was any- 
thing in such a note — the outside, as the mis- 
sive first came to view, was much more thrilling 
than the contents. But the very sight of it 
— penciled on rough, bluish scratch-paper, and 
ragged-edged and rumpled — as it was flipped 
across an intervening space or offered slyly be- 
hind a geography or dropped on the desk as 
the writer went up to the A spelling class — 
gave a sensation not to be duplicated in any 
later years. The contents, I regret to say, were 
insignificant, negligible. It is to be hoped that 
the big boys learned more about the art in 
time. But the mere fact of getting such a note, 
of having it written to yourself, of forecasting 
the contents, of having the other girls see you 
get it, all that in addition to the exciting fear 
that the teacher might see — once she made a 
girl read a note out loud! — filled the moment 
with peculiar emotion. 



174 A STEPDAUGHTER OF THE PRAIRIE 

Notes had a family connection with apples 
which appeared mysteriously in your desk or 
were offered slyly at recess, with gum-drops — 
available only on Monday, since people usually 
went to town on Saturday — with being chosen 
in Clap-In-and-Clap-Out, with valentines in the 
valentine box, with distinguished attentions in 
Drop-the-Handkerchief and such games, and — 
acme of romance! — with your name carved by 
some one, bold and unashamed, on some one's 
desk. The pleasures of the affair were largely 
factitious, however. The notes which looked so 
promising and had nothing in them were typi- 
cal of the whole matter. It was all like Clap- 
In-and-Clap-Out or Miller-Boy. It was very 
exciting and gratifying to be chosen, but after 
you had settled down in partnership, shyly un- 
comfortable and unable to think of anything 
to say, the game was largely over for you — 
no more excitement, no suspense; you were 
merely an onlooker on life. Your partner in 
discomfort became very unattractive and you 
rather envied those not yet chosen. As you 
looked around you saw no one you liked less 
than the boy who had chosen you. 



A STEPDAUGHTER OF THE PRAIRIE 175 

Cube root and partial payments were the 
two great mountain peaks of the science — I had 
almost called it the art — of arithmetic. Many 
a climber faltered and failed before he reached 
the dizzy heights of their summits. To have 
mastered them was to have a reputation for 
scholarship and intellectual attainment, not 
only in the school but in the whole neighbor- 
hood and even in adjoining ones, which nothing 
could shake. When, at a ciphering-match, after 
other competitors had been following the easy 
paths of cancellation and long division, you 
called for "cube root" with an easy nonchalant 
air, an audible breath of admiration came from 
the ranks of your allies and visible consterna- 
tion, mingled with awe, spread among your 
foes. It was almost glory enough for one life. 
When you came to the last great problem in 
partial payments — a Titanic problem, a prob- 
lem to set Homeric heroes! — and you were 
chosen by the teacher to put it on the black- 
board for the benefit of the class, it was a half- 
day's work. You were excused from all other 
classes while you wrought at it. You essayed 
a modest demeanor while you explained it to 



176 A STEPDAUGHTER OF THE PRAIRIE 

the unsuccessful ones, but it was difficult to 
support. 

It is an instance of the bad management of 
destiny that after all this preparation you 
should never be in the position of a large cred- 
itor with such a problem to solve, and that a 
bank-clerk can sum up all your little finances 
with a few clicks of an insignificant machine. 
I supposed at such moments of glory that in 
my riper years I should spend a part of every 
morning computing interest and courteously 
accepting partial payments. So much of our 
education is useless to us. 

Chronological recapitulations afforded a 
chance to achieve the same sort of scholarly 
triumph that partial payments did. Studying 
history meant reading along hazily about this 
and that, with only one thing really clear, 
namely, that the United States was always 
right, no matter what it was doing, and who- 
ever interfered was wrong, wickedly, shame- 
lessly wrong. We came out on solid ground 
about once a month, however, when we reached 
a chronological recapitulation. Here were con- 
crete facts, isolated, to be sure, and rather 



A STEPDAUGHTER OP THE PRAIRIE 177 

meaningless; but " committing " them was a 
definite task, to which we could buckle down 
with a satisfying effort of will. When learned 
they were to be written in a long list on the 
blackboard. You wrote them by putting down 
all the dates first, in a wavy disjointed line, and 
then, beginning at the top, you set in order the 
appropriate happenings. Sometimes you for- 
got, and left gaps in the progress of events, 
where important dates stood alone, begging for 
facts to prove their distinction. Something 
happened in 1775, you meditated with chalk on 
lip — but what was it? A chronological recapit- 
ulation was a leveling process, where all events 
assumed precisely the same importance. It 
was a kind of historical multiplication table. 
Sometimes the class recited the list in concert, 
a popular form of recitation which made in- 
dividual weakness inconspicuous. The per- 
formance began in full chorus, 

1607 Virginia was settled at Jamestown. 

1609 Henry Hudson navigated the Hudson River. 

1610 Starving-time prevailed in Virginia. 



178 A STEPDAUGHTER OF THE PRAIRIE 

But only a quartette survived into the eigh- 
teenth, century, two of these fell in the hard- 
ships of colonial life, and only a soloist sighted 
the French and Indian war. Glory waited the 
soloist, however, and in so difficult a feat as 
this the failure of the others was regarded as 
something to be condoned. 

There were other chances for academic dis- 
tinction, such as the writing-lesson, in which, 
however, proficiency was of a distinctly low 
order, — Augusta had a beautiful copy-book and 
never spilled her ink, — and headmarks, which 
one could achieve in either reading or spelling. 
The glory which went with headmarks was not 
of so fine a type as that which was attained 
through partial payments or chronological re- 
capitulation, but still one would not be without 
it. Even in speaking pieces one could attain 
a sort of eminence, though in this, as in all ar- 
tistic achievement, the result was less definite 
and logically certain than in the pursuit of 
pure scholarship. I got my pieces largely from 
Chambers ' Cyclopedia of English Literature, 
where I found many a thing that suited my 
fancy, at least; whatever other merits they 



A STEPDAUGHTER OF THE PRAIRIE 179 

lacked, they had the virtue of variety. But I 
suspect the audience liked them much less than 
the selections from the ragged Speaker Num- 
ber Three, which came into requisition weekly. 
As I recall the process of education now, 
the lunch-basket seems to occupy a dispropor- 
tionately large place in it. It was more fre- 
quently a bucket, — we preferred to say bucket, 
though the most of the children said pail, — 
since a bucket stood the physical strain better 
than a basket, and was more easily replaced 
from month to month. A great many different 
situations and dramatic interests and physical 
joys and sorrows were connected with that 
daily dinner-bucket. From the moment when 
Maldy or my mother packed it brimfull in the 
morning and tucked in the special red-bordered 
make of napkin which was devoted to school 
use, until we dropped the empty bucket inside 
the kitchen door at night and were promptly 
bidden by Maldy to pick it up and put it away, 
it was, one might say, an active element in our 
lives. In the first place there was the daily 
— semi-daily, in fact — question as to who was 
to carry it. Dramatic and emotional possibili- 



180 A STEPDAUGHTER OF THE PRAIRIE 

ties hovered about this problem, which was no 
simple one. It involved intricate issues of prec- 
edence and succession and privilege and physi- 
cal superiority and age and sex and who did 
it last and vigor of conscience and proportion 
of appetite and some occasional problems 
which no system could foresee or provide for. 
Mary shamelessly pleaded privilege of sex 
and age. But I, being a suffragist by birth 
and so prideful as to be loth to acknowledge 
physical inferiority, accepted my turn as a mat- 
ter of principle and only contended that I 
should not have more than my turn. Having 
brothers is a great quickener of moral courage. 
One day Henry, who was at times sophistical 
beyond belief, proved by some masculine sys- 
tem of logic that if women ought to vote I 
ought to carry the bucket as often as both he 
and John ; and they set the lunch at my wrath- 
paralyzed feet and went racing off. The spirit 
of Deborah and S emir amis and all the rest of 
them descended upon me. I placed the bucket 
in a fence-corner, hid it with a clot of tickle- 
grass, and went high-mindedly on. The look 
on the faces of the boys when they discovered 



A STEPDAUGHTER OF THE PRAIRIE 181 

my act sustained ine in many an hour after- 
ward; and they never tried the experiment 
again. After being generously supplied from 
our neighbors' buckets at noon, we resurrected 
our own lunch on the way home and ate it in 
restored amity, tinged with respect on the part 
of the boys, I was pleased to notice. Henry 
carried the bucket home. 

That was not the only time when we found 
ourselves dinnerless. Sometimes through real 
forgetfulness or genuine misunderstanding of 
the transportation system, the packed bucket 
remained standing on the kitchen table, and 
we were left at noon, or rather at recess, — for 
no one could wait until noon — unsupplied with 
what seemed at times to be the main object of 
going to school. The result, however, was far 
from tragic. The readiness with which the 
other children divided their own resources and 
laid their offerings before us was entirely char- 
acteristic of the temper of the prairie. I had 
never been in the Eckharts' house and never 
would be, but I ate with cordial relish their 
cold boiled eggs and their pieplant pie, with 
its subconscious flavor of sauerkraut. The 



182 A STEPDAUGHTER OF THE PRAIRIE 

relish was partly superinduced by curiosity, 
however. This was a fine opportunity to test 
the contents of other dinner-buckets, on which 
we had looked with curious and speculative eye. 
Some of the children had the custom of trad- 
ing select morsels in moments of cordial inti- 
macy, but that was forbidden by the authorities 
at our house, I didn't know why. We couldn't 
even exchange apple-cores, after the pleasant 
sociable manner of the Huffs and Browns. I 
tried it once, exchanging the luscious, translu- 
cent heart of a Jonathan for the dry remains 
of a Ben Davis, mysteriously but unmistakably 
flavored with sausage and that bread-and-but- 
tery taste which is undesirable except in bread 
and butter. I wasn't sure but there was a taste 
of Huff on it too. After that experiment it 
was easy to obey the injunction not to trade. 
But, on the occasions when we were thus the 
objects of public charity, we courteously sam- 
pled everything that came our way, from the 
rich brown-topped coffee-cake of the Eckharts 
— again with the sauerkraut flavor — to the cold 
biscuit with only milk and sugar for ' ' spread, ' ' 
proffered by the poor Burnhams, whose father 



A STEPDAUGHTER OF THE PRAIRIE 183 

was a renter. The opportunity was as valu- 
able as a whole course in sociology. The Huffs 
were renters too, but they had mince pie and 
cold sausage. 

In bad weather or on rainy days the lunch 
pervaded the whole noon hour, reappearing at 
intervals and filling in the interstices of Clap- 
In-and-Clap-Out or charades. At these times 
we set out our provisions on the desk-tops and 
began the meal with some show of ceremony. 
On other days, when the normal excitements 
of Blackman or Dare-Base or coasting called 
us, we dispatched our lunches so rapidly that 
they hardly seemed to have existed at all, and 
took a prompt departure for the outdoors, 
holding a final slice of bread and jam aloft on 
a smeary palm, and eating it into a neat curve 
around the edges. The most conscientious 
member of the family was always left to put 
away the remains. It is needless to say that 
Mary put away ours. 

The real epicure of the school was Augusta 
Horlocher. All pictures of the noon hour were 
pervaded by her. Augusta in a mood of easy 
friendliness, cracking her hard-boiled eggs — 



184 A STEPDAUGHTER OF THE PRAIRIE 

the pickled limes of our time — on the forehead 
of her intimate for the day, or, in a period of 
soul-aloneness, on her own brow; Angusta 
scraping the greater part of the preserves over 
to one corner of a slice of bread, so that the 
last bite should be preeminently the best; Au- 
gusta eating roll- jelly cake and reveling in the 
mechanical process, following round and round 
its snail-like convolutions without once remov- 
ing it from her lips until the center was 
reached; Augusta retiring with her choicest 
morsel to a quiet corner where no covetous 
glance could seem to urge her to divide; pic- 
tures like these showed an art of enjoyment 
which none of the rest of us ever attained. 

It was through the big girls, I believe, that 
the major part, the really desirable part, of 
our education was carried on. They had at- 
tained a wisdom of life which, amidst the re- 
serve practiced by the elders at our house, I 
despaired of ever reaching. The big girls knew 
so many things which I did not know and which 
in fact no one at our house seemed to know. 
It behooved me to be hanging about, listening 
to what they had to say to each other — only 






A STEPDAUGHTER OF THE PRAIRIE 185 

they so often whispered — and picking up any- 
savory crumb of knowledge they kindly 
dropped for me. 

What greatness the big girls possessed! 
They were so worldly-wise, so authoritative. I 
can't remember that they shone academically; 
they often bore, very lightly, too, the ignominy 
of being in classes with us, and even at that 
by no means outstripped us. They even had 
to be "put back" on occasion. But at recess 
and noon it was different. Then we dropped 
into our proper place and they rose to theirs. 
No one else can ever be so grown up as they 
were. Every sign of maturity about them was 
a wonder. 

Augusta was really more impressed than I 
was. All other incentives to ambition had 
passed over Augusta, leaving her unmoved; 
but the ambition to grow up bit her hard. 
When she should have been committing her 
spelling-lesson, she was slyly but seriously pil- 
ing her hair on top of her head. And she spent 
much time in sitting out to the end of the seat 
and letting her skirt hang straight down until 
it touched the floor, so that it would look long 



186 A STEPDAUGHTER OF THE PRAIRIE 

and grown-up. She would look down on this 
expanse of trailing garment and feel her small 
stack of hair and wave the fan made from a 
leaf cut neatly out of her copy-book and care- 
fully wimpled, and apparently have the most 
blissful feelings. 

As for me, I coveted the knowledge of the 
big girls more than I did their years. There 
was Amanda Huff. I learned a good deal from 
her while she sat in front of me. Amanda was 
quite sixteen, an age which we understood 
marked an epoch in feminine experience. She 
was going to stop school pretty soon, she was 
so big. Even now she very readily staid out 
for house-cleaning or the baby or washing. Joe 
Withers went to see her every Sunday night, 
and Monday morning in school, having got per- 
mission to " speak' ' to ask the grammar les- 
son, she told me all that had happened the 
night before. Her information marked clearly 
the stages in Joe's courtship, a progress to 
which, to do her justice, Amanda was offering 
no obstructions. I was a young confidant, but 
a very responsive one. I learned a good deal 
from Amanda. But when I began to tell it to 



A STEPDAUGHTER OF THE PRAIRIE 187 

my mother she spoke of having my seat 
changed, and I divulged no more. My mother's 
views on education by experience were limited. 
Amanda was married the next year, and so 
lifted above companionship with me forever. I 
never attained the state of being a big girl 
myself, because my sojourn in the school was 
too short. So I never could know their feel- 
ings or their glory. They were still looking 
down on me as a little girl, I have no doubt, 
when on a June "last day" I stacked my other 
books and my slate upon my geography as a 
foundation, and carried them home across the 
prairie quarter-section for the last time. There 
were masses of blue spiderwort and white an- 
emone down by the slough that day, I remem- 
ber, and ripe strawberries among the grass. 



THE YOUNGEST DAUGHTER OF 
ZELOPHEHAD 

The idea was John's originally; but Henry 
annexed it so promptly that it seemed in a min- 
ute or two to have been his all the time. That 
was no unusual occurrence. John and Henry 
presented, in practical matters, the relation of 
a colony and a mother-country — with constant 
taxation of ideas and grudgingly allowed rep- 
resentation in results. It did seem in those 
days as if Henry had the making of a states- 
man in him, his sense of relations was so clear 
and practical. 

This time John's notion concerned finance, 
an unheard-of thing in John. Henry was hy- 
pothetically the financier of our body, although, 
as our resources rarely passed out of his hands, 
that made little difference to the rest of us. 
All our pecuniary transactions seemed to take 
much the same form, — a magnificent concep- 
tion on Henry's part, his gracious permission 

188 



A STEPDAUGHTER OF THE PRAIRIE 189 

to the rest of us to fill subordinate places in 
its execution, and then a gathering in of the 
fruits by Henry himself. Not being entirely 
inexpressive, we sometimes demurred at this; 
but there seemed always to be a good mascu- 
line reason why this result should be entirely 
just and legal. John, with his dreamy head 
somewhere in the sky, didn't care much for 
money anyway, and I, being feminine, was 
quite unconvincing, and Mary was too small to 
command much attention. So the spending of 
our small profits, as well as the laying of our 
financial schemes, remained in Henry's hands. 
The source of our profits was usually the 
heads of the family, or some of the adult tran- 
sient members of the household — all adults 
seemed to be loaded with money, often having 
whole dollars in their pockets at once — and 
our processes were rather industrial than com- 
mercial. Hence John's sudden suggestion was 
sufficiently fascinating from its very novelty. 
He proposed, in fact, that we should go out 
into the public mart and engage in trade. We 
all held our breath for a moment at the en- 
terprise of the suggestion. And then Henry, 



190 A STEPDAUGHTER OF THE PRAIRIE 

recovering his, made the scheme his own in two 
sentences; and John immediately became a 
subordinate, a mere fetch-and-carry. Mary 
and I waited to be assigned places in the 
scheme of things. 

The plan was so simple yet so adventurous 
in its way that it is a wonder none of us had 
ever thought of it before. Out in the orchard 
were ripe grapes and apples and some peaches, 
more of all than the household needed; at the 
end of the drive ran the county road, along 
which passed the hungry public. Could there 
be a more suggestive juxtaposition of supply 
and demand? Henry visualized it all instantly 
— the road a public mart, the eager public hun- 
grily demanding, the immense profits certainly 
consequent upon trade. He was out in the 
world, a merchant, a financier, a capitalist. He 
expanded visibly before us as we eyed him. 
Awhile he mused, then assumed active com- 
mand of us all. 

On Wednesday there would be a meeting at 
the little county-seat, the road to which lay 
past our gate. Its purpose was trivial — poli- 
tics, probably ; we had not even thought of ask- 



A STEPDAUGHTER OF THE PRAIRIE 191 

ing to be allowed to go. But we had gathered 
from talk at the table that many men would 
be there. The meeting would begin in the early 
afternoon ; that meant that from ten o 'clock on 
there would be a constant passing by our gate. 
Some of these travelers would come from the 
far west of the county, some from the scantily 
settled expanse to the northwest. They would 
all be hungry. Henry laid his plans. 

Mary was sent to spread the scheme, in its 
meagerest outlines, before my father and 
mother. Mary's participation in an enterprise 
often ended with that. But somehow, in 
Mary's serious and honest telling, any exploit 
seemed to take on, not only plausibility, but 
positive merit. This time, however, my mother 
looked dubious, my father amused. Maldy lin- 
gered on a passing foot at the open door and 
looked at Mary with the complacence which 
Mary alone won from her. She recovered from 
that, however, to frown at Henry, skulking in 
dignified indifference outside the open window, 
and to express unsolicited disapproval — Mal- 
dy 's opinion often outran solicitation — of the 
whole scheme. 



19S A STEPDAUGHTER OF THE PRAIRIE 

"I want to make some money,' ' said Mary 
gently but persistently. Mary was guileless 
as the rising moon, but it was wise for her to 
say / instead of we. 

"Huuf !" said Maldy, and went on. 

"Oh, let them do it," said my father in an- 
swer to my mother's look of reluctance. My 
father was in a hurry to be off somewhere. It 
was a true adventurer who went to ask a favor 
when the authority was in a hurry. The de- 
cision was instantaneous, but the necessity for 
haste worked sometimes for and sometimes 
against the petitioner. "It won't do any harm 
so long as people are going toward town — as 
soon as they begin to come back the children 
must come in — Do you understand?" My 
father raised his voice and Henry's head now 
appeared at the window. 

I heard that regretfully, not because it cur- 
tailed the profits, but because it limited the ex- 
perience. If men — the kind of men who went 
by on the road — were in any way different 
when they came back from a political meeting, 
I should like to see them. That mysterious 
thing called drunkenness, of which we read in 



A STEPDAUGHTER OF THE PRAIRIE 19S 

temperance stories, along with its well-detailed 
symptoms, I had never had a chance to ob- 
serve. Henry submitted with a less imper- 
sonal reluctance; he saw nickels slipping past 
him, 

But a " stand' ' at the roadside we were to 
have. Henry promptly issued orders — certain 
duties for me, certain others for John, minor 
ones for Mary. On Monday the stand was to 
be built, on Tuesday the fruit gathered and 
our minds prepared, on Wednesday the great 
transaction would begin, about ten o'clock. 
Henry was so busy giving orders that the time 
seemed to fly. He came out two or three times 
to help me get the baskets of grapes, but he 
always remembered something else that must 
be superintended and hurried off abruptly. 
Ever since I have known Henry I have under- 
stood what the term captain of industry means. 

Tuesday night everything was ready. Inside 
the screened porch was our stock-in-trade, 
scores of apples and early peaches, baskets of 
grapes, a few of the ripest pears. A serious 
question had arisen while we collected them. 
As connoisseurs in fruit, within the limits of 



194 A STEPDAUGHTER OF THE PRAIRIE 

our own orchards, we knew, to the last, finest 
degree, the palatability of every variety. 
There are some persons to whom an apple is 
an apple and a peach a peach, but we were none 
of that sort. We recognized delicate grada- 
tions of toothsomeness, and balanced nicely the 
relative allurements of choice varieties. A man 
might as well declare himself frankly Philis- 
tine and barbarian at once as voluntarily eat 
a Ben Davis and call it good. As amateurs of 
apples we could hardly bear the thought of of- 
fering any but what we knew to be the best to 
anyone. It was a betrayal of our own good 
taste. But on the other hand would it pay to 
sacrifice our cherished General Grants or our 
last high-in-the-tree Benonis, when the cottony 
Sops of Wine or the flat saccharine Ramsdale 
Reds would suit the undiscriminating public 
quite as well, and were bigger and rosier at 
that. Henry considered the matter and set- 
tled it from the viewpoint of mere commercial- 
ism rather than that of art. It would be an 
insult to give anyone a Sops of Wine — we al- 
ways had difficulty with that plural — but there 



A STEPDAUGHTER OF THE PRAIRIE 195 

would be no offense in selling them if we could 
do it. 

So our rosy baskets, which looked so enticing, 
were really filled with what were, to us small 
epicures, the discards of the orchard, refused 
by our finer taste. If these did not prove en- 
ticing enough — if our customers had better 
judgment than we expected — Mary and I could 
hurry back and hastily gather some of the 
others, Henry said. ' ' Anyway, ' ' he added, * ' we 
are not going to try to sell to them when they 
come back. ' ' 

We sat in the dark considering prospects. A 
vague expectation of unsatisfaction disturbed 
me, but I repressed expression. 

"I wish we had some watermelons,' ' said 
Henry, raising his voice but the least degree. 

Maldy was sitting, also in the dark, just in- 
side the kitchen window and we knew it. But 
Maldy said nothing. 

After a pause, crowded with suggestion, 
Henry pursued, with the manner of one filling 
time and ears with pleasant conversation, 
"Everybody likes watermelon this time of 
year. ' ' 



196 A STEPDAUGHTER OF THE PRAIRIE 

There was still no sound from within the 
kitchen and conversation lapsed. 

All the watermelons on the place belonged 
to Maldy; I don't know why, but this was the 
custom. My father said it was because she 
was the only one who could protect them ade- 
quately. Certain it is that no man or child in- 
terfered twice with Maldy 's watermelons, even 
though they were the first to ripen and the 
finest to taste in the whole country. Maldy al- 
ways made a show of being very stingy with 
them, and ended with being so generous that 
her own profits were scanty. Certainly these 
earliest-ripe watermelons would add great at- 
traction to our stand. But Maldy said nothing. 

Henry counted his change, the combined 
ready capital of all four of us. It was fortu- 
nate that it was all in small pieces. 

"I," said Mary dreamily, "am going to buy 
a gold bracelet with my money." She ran 
imaginative fingers about her round little 
wrist. "Aunt Ella will get it for me when she 
goes back to New York." 

"And I," I broke in enthusiastically, "will 
get a new David Copper field with mine. ,, David 



A STEPDAUGHTER OP THE PRAIRIE 197 

Copper field had come to us already old, and 
its choicest passages had long since been read 
into annihilation. 

" We're not going to divide up the money," 
said Henry with simple authority. " We're 
going to take it all and get a new gun with 
it." Then to our silence he added. "We need 
a new saddle because mine is getting too small. 
But I guess we'll get the gun." 

After a pause I spoke out. My spirit was 
Patrick Henry's but my words were my own. 
I have forgotten them now but at the time they 
seemed eloquent and should have been convinc- 
ing. That they were not was due to the limi- 
tations of the language, not to any lack of en- 
ergy behind them. But Henry's position was 
unchanged. 

"Anyway," he said, "John and I are going 
to do all the selling. You will have to stay 
back in the grove when there is anybody 
there. ' ' 

I paused abruptly in my rush of argument 
and contumely. This was a fresh blow. I had 
already had visions of myself in the new and 
attractive role of cordial and winning sales- 



198 A STEPDAUGHTER OF THE PRAIRIE 

person, and had practiced little graces and ur- 
banities among the grapevines, combining, as 
nearly as I could, my mother's gracious manner 
with her poorer visitors, and that of a shoe- 
clerk who had sometimes fitted me and whose 
ease I greatly admired. I had expected to add 
largely to our sales by my charm — and who 
knew what further it might all lead to? 

' ' Well, I guess not, Mr. Henry ! ' ' I burst out 
with indignation which fettered expression. 

"When there's nobody passing," went on 
Henry, now fully committed to setting forth 
his policy, "you can come out. And you can 
bring rags and keep the dust wiped off every- 
thing — and things like that. But it ain't the 
place for girls." 

I was meditating a sufficient answer for this 
when Mary spoke. 

"You are a mean thing," she said. 

She rose and said it again with greater em- 
phasis, "You're a mean thing." 

Vituperation was foreign to Mary's tongue 
and her phrases were limited. She felt around 
on the dark floor for the prim elderly doll still 
dear to her eight-year-old heart, and took her 



A STEPDAUGHTER OF THE PRAIRIE 199 

departure. Just beyond the door she paused 
again and her serious little voice came back 
to us out of the darkness with less of indigna- 
tion in it than of sober conviction. "You're 
a mean thing,' ' she repeated once more. 

I heard Maldy 's chair scrape on the kitchen 
floor and her solid step on the backstairs as 
she followed to see Mary to bed. Old as we 
were, Maldy had no faith in our putting of 
ourselves to bed, and her vesper visit to us 
was as certain as my mother's. We could not 
help thinking, however, that there was a pre- 
cautionary element in Maldy 's final look at us, 
which my mother 's lacked. While we continued 
to sit there, in an uncomfortable, unadjusted 
silence, I could hear the distant murmur of 
her voice in Mary's room above, and I knew 
that she was comforting Mary. When Mary 
was in trouble she rarely said anything; but 
everyone in the house — except the cause of her 
distress — wanted to comfort her. I used to 
wonder how she accomplished it; there were 
times when I went without comforting. 

The silence downstairs continued, unim- 
paired by conciliatory remarks, until we were 



200 A STEPDAUGHTER OF THE PRAIRIE 

once more called from our musings to go to 
bed. In harassed moments life sometimes 
seemed to consist entirely of regretful retir- 
ings and reluctant arisings. 

In the morning Mary seemed to melt away 
from the breakfast- table without anyone's 
noting her departure. That was not surpris- 
ing. When Mary was at outs with the world 
she simply disappeared — usually to my 
mother's room — until either the situation or 
her mood was readjusted. My own policy was 
different. I was accustomed to remain active 
on the field of battle. This time my method 
was, I confess, inartistic, but it accomplished 
something. A dinner-pail full of strong brine, 
poised in unsteady hands over the finest 
baskets of grapes, brought Henry to a compro- 
mise. All the money we made above what the 
gun cost I could have. As I appeared incredu- 
lous, he went a step farther. I could have half 
the bounties on skins from his killings for the 
first year. That really left me still unex- 
pectant, but it held a show of victory. And, 
anyway, it would be no fun to stay at the house 
all the morning when the novel excitement of 



A STEPDAUGHTER OF THE PRAIRIE 201 

traffic was in full blare down at the road. I 
assisted in carrying the baskets down to the 
stand, while Henry made out his scale of 
prices. That done, I was allowed to sit in par- 
tial concealment behind the hedge and make 
up " pokes' ' of heavy paper; Maldy had af- 
forded us only a very meager supply of paper 
bags. 

Mary lived on her pride in some seclusion 
or other and did not approach us. I was aware 
that I had to some degree compromised with 
my independence — But what of that? I could 
be proud any day and we couldn't have a stand 
at the road every day. Curiosity and interest 
in life conquered. 

The stand was built under an osage-orange 
tree, allowed to grow for shade above the rest 
of the trimmed hedges. Henry and John ar- 
ranged the glossiest of their wares tastefully 
upon their structure, and then everything was 
ready. We awaited custom. We had a point 
of vantage at the top of the hill, from which 
we could command a view of the road in each 
direction. It was a bare dusty way, its yellow 
thread of track enclosed on each side by a 



202 A STEPDAUGHTER OF THE PRAIRIE 

stretch of weeds, now in August ripeness, wild 
hemp and sunflower and dog-fennel, with an oc- 
casional stretch of prairie grass not yet crowd- 
ed out by the weeds of civilization. 

A team approached down the neighboring 
hill with a wagon full of people. About the 
stand excitement swelled. "Now you keep 
back, ' ' Henry dropped over his shoulder to me, 
"it's a whole lot of men." The feminist 
crouched low behind the thickest part of the 
hedge. Henry and John took easy commercial 
attitudes at the stand. The wagon rolled on 
in its little yellow dust-cloud, made the slow 
ascent of the hill, quickened its speed as it 
touched the upper level, and rattled past us 
without a pause. Its occupants were the Bled- 
soes, who lived two miles beyond us and had 
nearly as much fruit as we did. Ikie Bledsoe 
waved a jeering hand at us from the rear of 
the wagon, where he sat with his knees doubled 
over the endgate, and dropped an indistinguish- 
able remark as the horses started to trot down 
the other side of the hill. 

Henry looked along the empty road for a 
few silent minutes and then sent John to get 



A STEPDAUGHTER OF THE PRAIRIE 

a corn-knife and cut down the weeds in front 
of the stand. The sight of John's activity re- 
vived everyone 's spirits. Presently an old man 
jogged up the hill on a ragged sorrel horse, 
rode up to the stand, and, after long considera- 
tion, bought a nickel's worth of peaches. The 
sorrel, as they turned away, snatched an apple 
from the stand, knocked off three others and 
stepped on one of them. 

Two women, both in gingham sunbonnets and 
half-hander gloves, drove past next. They 
stopped and looked at our wares, but only, ap- 
parently, to see how ours compared with what 
they had at home, as if we were a fruit exhibit 
at a county fair. Henry was sober. At that 
moment the gun didn't look any bigger than a 
revolver to him. 

But a long spring-wagon full of men came 
next, and the men made a combined purchase 
of thirty-five cents ' worth. It was a great com- 
fort at least to have money enough to rattle. 
Henry let John hold it part of the time. The 
next man bought a nickel's worth of grapes 
and then two men bought a dozen apples, hag- 
gling over the price. Then it seemed to be time 



204 A STEPDAUGHTER OF THE PRAIRIE 

to dust the stock off and Henry sent me to the 
house to get one of Maldy's turkey- wings. Mal- 
dy's fortunate absence from the kitchen made 
it possible for me to secure one and also to 
sample the cookies on which Ellen was experi- 
menting. I complimented the result very cordi- 
ally and Ellen received my remarks with more 
than wonted graciousness and gave me a hand- 
ful to take back to the road. 

When I returned to the stand I found there 
a gloom which even the distribution of cookies 
did not entirely lighten. I gathered, as I wielded 
my turkey-wing — and found it a not very pli- 
able or sympathetic implement — that succes- 
sive vehicles had passed inattentive. Even at 
this moment a wagon, full to the dashboard, 
lumbered past, dully indifferent. Henry for- 
got to send me back to cover. A spring wagon 
followed, its occupants regaling themselves 
with watermelon and impassive to the out- 
spread charms of more aristocratic fruits. A 
mover- wagon followed, its engulfed inhabitants 
also enjoying watermelon, the driver thrusting 
his head out from under the canvas like a tur- 
tle, to eject the seeds, and somebody in the 



A STEPDAUGHTER OF THE PRAIRIE 205 

vague interior discarding well-cleaned rinds 
through the hole in the rear. 

"I'll bet they stole them," said Henry acidly. 
Of course movers did not have the best of repu- 
tations among us. 

A man coming from the other direction 
bought a nickel 's worth of grapes to take home, 
and said that if his woman was there she might 
want a whole basketful ; but that was colorless 
comfort to us. A wagon containing two young 
men and two girls and great hilarity, ap- 
proached, and for sheer gallantry the young 
man in the back seat must treat — not too lav- 
ishly — with grapes and peaches. Our sky 
brightened. Conversation turned to compari- 
son of different makes of firearms. 

Now as noon drew on a pretty regular 
stream of vehicles began to pass — a wagon with 
two men on the seat in front and two women, 
each with a baby, on kitchen chairs behind; a 
second wagon with side-boards laid across 
them for seats, all full of people ; other convey- 
ances of the same kind, all crowded full and 
overflowing with sociability. They all creaked 
up the hill slowly, greeted by our rising hopes. 



206 A STEPDAUGHTER OF THE PRAIRIE 

and rattled down it rapidly, pursued by our in- 
dignant disappointment. But they rarely 
stopped, even at the boys' shrill announcement 
of their wares. I remained behind the hedge 
continuously. 

One thing began to seem strange. About 
half of these people were eating watermelon. 
The coincidence seemed more and more re- 
markable — that they should all have brought 
watermelon along and with one mind begun to 
eat it at this precise point. We considered the 
practical improbability of this. As we did so 
another thing came to our notice. We could 
always trace an oncoming wagon down the long 
hill opposite us, and almost into the hollow. 
Then a little interval would always elapse be- 
fore we could see the horses' bobbing heads as 
they climbed the hill to our station. Now we 
noticed that this interval was unnecessarily 
long. Men did not usually rest their horses at 
the bottom of a hill. What were they doing? 
We traced a certain white and bay team down 
the opposite slope and into the hiatus at the 
bottom. Then minutes elapsed while we craned 
our necks at the top of the hill and waited for 



A STEPDAUGHTER OF THE PRAIRIE 207 

the white ears and bay ears to appear in the 
line of the yellow track. Finally the wagon 
was in front of us — and the people in it were 
eating watermelon! We fixed our eyes on the 
next wagon approaching — with precisely the 
same resulting observation. 

Henry bade John watch the stand, and raced 
away down the hill. John bade me do so, and 
followed him. An hour before I had coveted 
this position. Now, after a moment's hesitat- 
ing obedience, I swept all the* stores behind the 
hedge and followed John. 

At the bottom of the hill we at first saw noth- 
ing unusual as we came racing up. Then, when 
we were opposite the big cottonwood which 
stood by a farm gate opening into a field, we 
saw. A team advanced down the other hill at 
the very same moment, the men behind it talk- 
ing loudly and absorbedly until they reached 
us. Then they, too, saw and stopped. At the 
very foot of the cottonwood, on a small solitary 
patch of blue grass set among the daisy- 
flowered dog-fennel, were two little round piles 
of watermelons, their striped and blotched 
greenness enticing to the hungry eye. And be- 



208 A STEPDAUGHTER OF THE PRAIRIE 

tween the two piles stood Mary, in a little blue 
dress, her soft, childish arms tightly clasping 
a big mottled green melon, aronnd which they 
could barely reach. The whitish-gray trunk of 
the tree stretched up behind her, and its tink- 
ling, glinting leaves sounded and shone over- 
head. 

Mary uttered not a word as the wagon 
stopped. She gave one appealing look at its 
occupants, and then drooped her head until her 
loose brown hair touched the top of her green 
burden. Her cheeks grew pinker and pinker, 
and she clasped the melon tighter and tighter, 
but she stood her ground bravely, waiting. The 
men looked for a moment and then one of them 
called in a jolly way, "What do you want for 
it, sissy V 9 

"Only fifty cents," said Mary, shyer than 
ever. 

The man jumped out and came to get it, and 
Mary relinquished her solid burden and took 
his two quarters in the same sedate diffidence. 

"See here," demanded Henry when the 
wagon rolled on, "What are you doing this 
fort" 



A STEPDAUGHTER OF THE PRAIRIE 209 

"I wanted to get some money to buy a brace- 
let/ ' said Mary simply, looking the piles over 
to select another melon. 

"Well, gee-whiz, how do you think we're go- 
ing to make any?" 

"You wouldn't give me any of yours," said 
Mary in the same impersonal way, wiping her 
new melon off with a dish-towel she had se- 
creted neatly behind the tree. 

"Well, I'd like to know what right you think 
you have to do this — where 'd you get these 
melons, anyway?" he broke off, shifting his 
line of arraignment. 

"Maldy gave them to me. She brought them 
down here for me," answered Mary with the 
same natural simplicity, a manner especially 
exasperating to Henry when he was in a bel- 
ligerent position. When one simply told the 
whole truth, secreted nothing, colored nothing, 
defended nothing, what was there for her an- 
tagonist to attack and to continue to attack? 

Henry was brought to an abrupt stop, which 
seemed to jolt his ideas all to pieces. "I'll bet 
she didn't!" he exploded. 

Mary made no answer. From behind the tall 



210 A STEPDAUGHTER OF THE PRAIRIE 

weeds which formed a thick fringe beyond the 
clipped hedge rose Maldy, eyeing Henry im- 
passively. 

Henry looked at our assembled forces. 
Mary, supported by Maldy, was invulnerable. 
I, of course, was on their side ; John was never 
a very eager partizan. 

Maldy 's look spoke stolid triumph. "Got 
your gun yet?" she asked grimly. 

That night when Maldy was putting us to 
bed — we were tired for once and willing to re- 
tire early when the notion was suggested to us 
— the voice of an itinerant Methodist preacher, 
who had timed his travels so carefully that he 
arrived at our house just at suppertime, kept 
rising to us from the porch below. The 
preacher had looked in at the convention on his 
way, and his thoughts were on politics and 
large matters of statecraft. He discoursed 
broadly of democracy, and then dropped to a 
detail — I missed the connection. 

"Woman is the greatest moral force in the 

world," he said authoritatively, " er, that 

is, one of the greatest, of course. The Lord 



A STEPDAUGHTER OF THE PRAIRIE 211 

never intended her to take any part in govern- 
ment. She has always ruled by love and gen- 
tleness, and if she tries any other way she will 
lose her priceless influence." 

' ' Huuf ! ' ' said Maldy, as she tucked Mary in. 
Then she went clumping down the stairs to cut 
a watermelon and distribute it on the porch. 

Left alone, Mary lay quiet a long time, in her 
still little way. Then she suddenly sat up in 
her bed. ' i Barbara, ' ' she said, ' ' I am going to 
give you and Henry and John some of my 
money. I'm sorry about Henry." 



THE SCRAP-BOOKS 

I don't know for what purpose a large box 
of bound volumes of Reports of proceedings of 
Agricultural and Horticultural Societies was 
sent to our house every year as regularly as 
the seasons came, causing an annual sigh from 
my mother and something more articulate and 
more expressive from Maldy. For they had to 
be kept somewhere — the professional wail of 
the housekeeper — and dusted and moved, until 
with the passing of time they were supplanted 
by another set and were carried to the attic to 
make room for later Proceedings. I suppose 
that our place was a headquarters for some- 
thing or a distributing station of some sort. I 
have vague recollections of seeing the volumes 
offered to rather surprised and dubiously con- 
senting neighbors and other farmers who hap- 
pened along. But even after a conscientious 
effort to distribute them, there was always a 
dreary and futile remainder left on our hands 

212 



A STEPDAUGHTER OF THE PRAIRIE 213 

to be carried up to the attic and there, except 
for one use, to fall into dnsty oblivion. 

From our point of view the books were quite 
unreadable and almost pitifully useless. A 
book that couldn't be read was an abject thing. 
We were sorry for the men whom we saw car- 
rying them away ; for their disappointment and 
that of their children when they should open 
the books at home and find what they really 
contained. Year after year we looked into 
them in the hope that we should eventually find 
something. It didn't seem possible that so 
many books should be published with abso- 
lutely nothing in them. But such meager ex- 
pectation as we had was always disappointed. 

To begin with, they were, even when new, 
dreary, dun-colored books, the art of some offi- 
cial printer. They were full of pictures, and 
that was promising, for naturally one expects 
the presence of pictures to indicate literature 
of the lighter sort. But such pictures as they 
were when you came to look at them ! Common 
bugs in all stages of unbeautiful growth; 
worms only less ugly than in life; hens, mere 
hens, standing up to have their pictures taken ; 



214 A STEPDAUGHTER OF THE PRAIRIE 

and machinery and other stuff not worth de- 
tailing. You opened up a nice, shiny infolded 
sheet, evidently intended in creation for a 
beautiful picture, and found it held only draw- 
ings of windmills or churns. There were col- 
ored plates of acute pericarditis, looking a good 
deal like a Sunday roast, and a faithful repre- 
sentation of Sclerostoma Syngamus and of 
Phyllostreata Zimmermanii and three forms of 
Agrotis, whatever that may be. There were 
fanciful diagrams of statistics, looking a good 
deal like a time-table run wild. The amazing 
artists of these books could make things look 
like what they never were. Bed clover, when 
pictured by them, looked like a rabbit's head 
and an aster like a block of patchwork from a 
quilt. 

That was our first acquaintance with science. 
"We did not think much of it. Nothing looked 
or sounded as we knew it. Our respect for big 
words vanished before these. There was 
Pachyta Octomulata, for instance — what if that 
should get into the spelling book! We depre- 
cated the foolishness of turning the natural 



A STEPDAUGHTER OF THE PRAIRIE 215 

names of things — which of course had existed 
first — into these mouthfuls of letters. 

It is easily to be seen that no entertainment 
was to be drawn from such books as these. 
Even when the agriculturists broke into verse, 
as they sometimes did, the result was worse 
than negligible. It was really surprising that 
men could think it worth while to waste print 
on such matter as all this — they must have 
wanted tremendously to make a book. And 
some books are so interesting. You have no 
conception of what an irritating tragedy it was 
to have a box of books arrive, always an event, 
and to have an incommunicative parent open 
the box at our impatient demand, and to get the 
first volume coaxed out of its secure pocket 
and tear off the paper covering with excited 
fingers and find — an Agricultural Report! — 
and then to discover that the grown-ups had 
known it all the time. 

But there was one function by which these 
despised works partly redeemed their useless 
existence. They made scrap-books. I don't 
know where a child gets its impulse to make a 
scrap-book or why it does so. It seems to be 



216 A STEPDAUGHTER OF THE PRAIRIE 

following some unidentified rudimentary mo- 
tive. We never read in ours after they were 
made ; at least if we did so it was a last resort 
for entertainment. We didn't regard them 
with even the pride which naturally follows any 
act of creation. But we seemed to feel it laid 
on us to preserve the literature of newspapers 
and magazines from utter oblivion by entomb- 
ing it in the sarcophagus of a scrap-book. I 
think each of us had at least one to his credit 
annually. 

The building of them was an occupation that 
was much encouraged by the authorities on 
rainy days. We rarely had a hoard of clip- 
pings ready for literary embalming, but, 
equipped with scissors, a paste-bowl prepared 
by the grumbling Maldy, a stack of old periodi- 
cals and newspapers, and the Agricultural Re- 
ports, we were ready to spend the afternoon in 
saving literature for the world. We frequently 
read through the bits we were going to pre- 
serve, but when one is doing such a piece of 
work on a wholesale plan one can't stop to 
read everything that goes in. It is better to 
save it first and read it afterward. The puz- 



A STEPDAUGHTER OF THE PRAIRIE 217 

zling questions which arose were rather me- 
chanical than literary. It was really less im- 
portant to get pieces of literary merit than to 
get those which would fit the page neatly. Some 
quite meritorious periodicals had columns of a 
width that was unadaptable to the page of the 
Agricultural Report, and their prose at least 
had to be discarded altogether. 

Many difficult question were to be decided. 
In the first place, when four persons are mak- 
ing scrap-books at once, the problem of pri- 
mary and proprietary rights arises often. 
Henry didn 't care for poetry, but when it came 
to making a scrap-book he wanted as much as 
anyone ; and that did not seem fair in a person 
who always voted for prose when some one was 
going to read aloud to us. A hazy aunt some- 
where subscribed for Our Young Soldiers for 
John. Except for the pleasure of having it 
come addressed to him, he did not care much 
for it, and generously allowed us to read it 
freely. He even saw it destroyed with equa- 
nimity. But on these occasion he claimed 
everything usable in it, and only flung us the 
hacked and rifled remains. Besides these mat- 



218 A STEPDAUGHTER OF THE PRAIRIE 

ters, the constantly arising question of who had 
chosen pieces first added the liveliness of an 
economic struggle to what would otherwise have 
been a purely academic pursuit. 

Then there was the perplexing difficulty of 
choosing between articles inconveniently set on 
opposite sides of the page. Which should be 
saved for immortality and which should be lost 
forever in the pasty act of adhesion? In addi- 
tion to that, there were continual decisions as 
to order and arrangement, and the nice man- 
agement which brought everything out even at 
the bottom of the page. Mary, with her cus- 
tomary readiness of device, filled in her inch 
or half -inch spaces with miscellaneous obituary 
notices. It didn't matter if she didn 't know the 
people, she said ; they were dead just the same. 
John usually supplied such gaps with recipes 
from the Home Departments, because he could 
always find one the right length. When we 
jeered at him for getting outside of his mascu- 
line sphere, which in our notion was strictly 
defined, he acknowledged soberly that he had 
not read them, but thought that if he ever got 
married this would save buying a cook book. 



A STEPDAUGHTER OF THE PRAIRIE 219 

Anyway, the practical convenience of the con- 
trivance could not be questioned. For me, I 
prided myself on making things come out even, 
or on finding a bit of verse in the Gems of 
Thought column to eke out with. It seemed 
more ornamental and literary than recipes or 
obituary notices, and I was all for the literary 
thing. 

It will thus be seen that when one settled 
down to the making of a scrap-book it became 
an absorbing occupation. Those Agricultural 
Reports did not exist entirely in vain, although 
the form of their contribution to literature was 
one undreamed of by their perpetrators. It 
was rather unfortunate that a wandering Sec- 
retary of Agriculture or some such official came 
in upon us one day when we were in the midst 
of this vicarious literary activity. I was trying 
painfully to decide between an attractive-look- 
ing piece of poetry, exactly the length of a col- 
umn in my book, on one side of a page in the 
Farm World, and the neat, solid paragraphs of 
a discussion of the decay of the Grange and 
the vices of middlemen on the other. John, 
sticky to his eyebrows, was cutting out and 



220 A STEPDAUGHTER OF THE PRAIRIE 

trimming off a poem to fit a vacant space, im- 
partially clipping off the last words on the out- 
standing ends of the longer lines; and Henry 
and Mary, on their knees on the floor, were 
busily wielding their oozy paste swabs. A heap 
of discarded leaves from our four books lay 
among the old newspapers, and we were all in 
the state of blissful absorption in which They 
loved best to see us on a muddy day. 

At that point Maldy, the all-knowing and 
authoritative, rushed in upon us, commanding 
us to put away and clear up immediately. But 
she was too late and we were too much bewil- 
dered by her suddenness to take prompt action. 
Almost at the same moment my father entered 
with this important stranger. And there sat 
we four on the carpet, each with a mutilated 
Report in hand. Perhaps he was the very one 
who had written the article on Pachyta Octo- 
mulata. And of course he could not know that 
these books had already lain in the attic three 
years waiting to be used. However, he was a 
man of self-control, as all officials and candi- 
dates must be, and confined his agricultural 
passion for the moment to politic remarks on 



A STEPDAUGHTER OF THE PRAIRIE 221 

the young olive branches before him. Or per- 
haps his opinion of the Reports did not differ 
much from ours. We, after this first notice 
was over, returned to our paste pots, all un- 
aware of the inappropriateness of our occupa- 
tion. Maldy, since the worst had happened, 
quit frowning at us from her station in the 
depths of the dining-room and returned to the 
kitchen. 

I said that we made up our scrap-books out 
of whole cloth. We did usually, but I acknowl- 
edge that I, who perhaps worshiped at my lit- 
erary shrines with a warmer devotion than the 
others, often had a hoard all ready to begin 
upon. I was always staying Maldy 's none too 
patient hand just at the moment when she was 
taking a newspaper to start a fire or to cover a 
shelf, in order that I might rescue some bit of 
poetry from such unnatural fate. When the 
time came to have a general pasting, I un- 
earthed rumpled and frayed clippings from 
boxes and pockets and books. That threw me 
a little behind the others in getting a share out 
of the common stock, but I flattered myself that 
my selections had finer sentiment and more 



A STEPDAUGHTER OF THE PRAIRIE 

purely literary flavor than theirs. Mary, too, 
sometimes had a few scraps on hand, but hers, 
as will be seen, were selected with a different 
motive. 

Of course one can't expect to find as good 
poetry in newspapers as in books. Even in 
one's earliest reading of newspapers one dis- 
covers that. But once in a while I found in a 
newspaper something out of a book, qualified by 
the fine atmosphere given it by its association. 
I can't tell the feeling of getting such a poem, 
by a rare chance one of Tennyson's perhaps, 
into the pages of my scrap-book. Of course 
one could find Maud Muller or A Psalm of Life 
in the upper right-hand corner of a newspaper 
page almost any day — but Tennyson! I tried 
setting Break, Break, Break in the middle of a 
page all by itself when I found it, since it 
seemed enough for the glory of one leaf; but I 
didn't admire the effect of the wide margin of 
statistics about fall wheat and spring wheat 
which were left to set it off. 

I didn't greatly love Shakespeare as yet, but 
I thought it my duty to preserve from dishon- 
orable neglect any stray bits I found in the 



A STEPDAUGHTER OF THE PRAIRIE 223 

newspapers. That was merely a duty. There 
were other acts of the same kind which were a 
sort of religious joy, as when I found a scrap 
of Lalla Rookh or The Vision of Sir Launfal 
set, in out-of-place brightness, on the prosaic 
sheet of a farm paper, among lucubrations of 
veterinary science and discussions as to 
whether cows should be milked twice or three 
times a day. These things I rescued as brands 
from a sacrilegious burning, and saved them 
to shed a light from another world on the too 
modern pages of my scrap-book. A poem from 
a book became peculiarly mine when I found it 
thus detached and gathered it into my pos- 
sessions. 

I don 't know when we discontinued this form 
of entertainment. Henry outgrew it first of 
course, and supplanted it with less literary 
pursuits. A relative gave me a real scrap- 
book, with columns of bias mucilaged lines 
which did away with the paste-bowl, and in ef- 
fect laid it on me to choose carefully and eco- 
nomically the matter that was to be perpetu- 
ated in its orderly pages. Long after even 
Mary had ceased to make Agricultural Reports 



224 A STEPDAUGHTER OF THE PRAIRIE 

into scrap-books I searched through the house 
for samples of them. I thought there must be 
dozens of them, remembering our activity and 
the numberless new starts we made, when we 
tired of the mus sines s or the material of the 
old ones and wanted to begin afresh on a new 
plan. 

But Maldy seemed to have disposed of all the 
old ones in her zealous destruction of the un- 
necessary, and I found none but one of Mary's, 
whether her last or not, I don't know. I sup- 
pose it was a fair representative of them all, 
and that Henry's and John's and mine were all 
put together on the same literary principles. 
But I doubt if any of us had such a funny little 
assortment as Mary. Mary was a moral soul 
always, as evidenced by her choice of obituary 
notices as literary material. It was Mary who 
introduced moral issues into everyday life, and 
mixed matters of conscience and matters of 
pleasant inclination in a most annoying man- 
ner. When we dramatized sections of the Book 
of Martyrs for our own light entertainment, 
Mary always elected to be the martyr, to the 
complete satisfaction of everyone else. The 



A STEPDAUGHTER OF THE PRAIRIE 2Z5 

rest of us preferred to be persecutors; the 
role offered greater activity and more natural 
motives. On days of reckoning, such as come 
in the best of families, unless there was glar- 
ing and unasked evidence against Mary, she 
was excused on a priori grounds, a judgment 
that often led to her momentary unpopularity. 
To one who knew Mary thoroughly her scrap- 
book was not a surprise. Her gleanings 
seemed to be taken largely from Sunday-school 
papers and from the Family Circle page or 
Our Young People in the church papers. No 
false prejudice as to the names of authors or 
their factitious reputation guided her in her 
choice. The first three poems were entitled 
respectively Phussandphrett, a pleasant com- 
bination of allegory and protest against pho- 
netic spelling, Pull the Weeds, and Revenue on 
Rum, all of them titles of a beautiful clarity. 
Besides these there were Signs of Rain, A No- 
ble Stand, Lost Jewels, A Very Intelligent Bird 
— a dialogue with Bob-White on certain indus- 
trial problems, slightly intelligent — Papa's Les- 
son, True Temperance, Contentment, beginning 
"Once on a time an old red hen," and pages 



226 A STEPDAUGHTER OF THE PRAIRIE 

more of the same kind. Katie Lee and Willie 
Gray made a romantic oasis among them. 
There never was a scrap-book without Katie 
and Willie. I must have made beginnings of 
half a dozen in my time, and every one of them 
contained that happy syncopation of life and 
domestic polity. 

The prose was equally edifying; Success, 
What It Is and How to Win It, Right and 
Wrong Ambition, If I Were a Girl, a complete 
sermon of Talmage's on The Marriage Ring, 
evidently chosen for the long, even sides of its 
columns. It made three beautiful pages. I 
don't know why Mary didn't put in more of 
Talmage's sermons. 

But she did not confine herself to the purely 
didactic. Fiction was represented in The Nut- 
ting Party, an innocent tale of how Mattie and 
Ethel and Rosie went out and got some nuts 
and brought them home, in a sprightly story 
beginning, "Good morning! Good morning! 
How is the invalid this fine morning ?" and in 
many "True Incidents" of one sort and an- 
other. I always avoided true incidents myself, 
having much greater respect for invention. 



A STEPDAUGHTER OF THE PRAIRIE 227 

Then, not to restrict herself too closely to belles 
lettres, she went into science and general in- 
formation in The Chameleon and Its Habits, 
Sacred Bathing Places, Chaldean Coffins, illus- 
trated — Mary probably thought these were re- 
ligions pieces — a dramatic account of the his- 
tory of Lady Jane Gray in dialogue form, 
Flamingoes and Alaskan Burial Customs, also 
illustrated. 

There was an extended account of Grant's 
death, with the big black heading, Death Con- 
quers All, and heavy black lines along each col- 
umn, carefully preserved by Mary in cutting 
out. Mary was no doubt proud of those lines, 
and they really did make a beautiful page, 
which the rest of us probably envied her. There 
was an account of Queen Victoria with her pic- 
ture, and — to treat royalty impartially — a com- 
panion picture of the king of Siam. There 
were other pictures equally alluring, one enti- 
tled Cromwell Dissolving the Long Parliament, 
with a stamping and flourishing Cromwell and 
cowering Parliamentarians scuttling to cover. 

Finally, as if to prove beyond question her 
catholic taste, Mary's instinct had led her to 



A STEPDAUGHTER OF THE PRAIRIE 

choose some of those results of genius in which 
literary form and didactic purpose are aptly 
combined. She had rhymes and acrostics to 
teach the ten commandments, the kings of Eng- 
land, or even physiological rule. One of these 
happy works began, 

A — s soon as you're up shake blanket and sheet, 
B — etter be without shoes than sit with wet feet, 

and so on. And a purely literary one rendered 
Dickens into, 

A is for Agnes, so sweet and true and kind, 

B is for poor Barnaby, with clouds upon his mind, 

and on through 

P is for Pickwick, a friend to young and old, 
Q is for Quilp, a villain strong and bold, 

to 

W is for Weller, e'er to his master true. 

It seemed to be an attempt to show that though 
novels these works were quite of the type of the 
Sunday-school library story and perfectly safe 
reading. 



A STEPDAUGHTER OP THE PRAIRIE 229 

Mary's scrap-book would have pleased the 
pedagogical Mr. Day, of Sandford and Merton. 
I think it is just the kind he would have had 
Henry prepare ; only he would have had more 
about flamingoes and Chaldean funerals. 

I can't remember what I thought of Mary's 
scrap-books, but I am sure that I must have 
looked upon them with the sense of meritorious 
superiority which only the exalted assurance of 
finer literary taste can give one. Mine must 
have looked a good deal like hers, except that 
of course it would not be so neat. But mine 
had mental rubrications and little halos, invisi- 
ble to any eye but my own, around certain 
names of those to whom I had given literary 
canonization. Of course there were other 
names also, uncanonized and unhaloed, and 
long, unrubricated sections. I, too, had bor- 
rowings from Selected, and I don't think that I 
was above Talmage's sermons, always at hand 
on the patent side of the county papers. And 
I remember a long series of Letters to a Young 
Daughter, which gave me many pages of com- 
bined neatness and good counsel, fine as Mary's 
own. 



230 A STEPDAUGHTER OF THE PRAIRIE 

But that new book, with its beautiful gummed 
lines and its red binding, almost put the mak- 
ing of scrap-books on a new plane and forbade 
the use of inferior material, sermons or not. 
Still, I never showed that book to anyone, espe- 
cially after I saw my father open it one night 
and smile. He showed it to my mother, and 
she smiled a little, too, though she said noth- 
ing, and presently looked to see what I was 
reading. It never seemed to me fair for grown 
people to smile at children when the children 
didn't know what they were smiling at — 
though of course with one's mother it is differ- 
ent. 

After that I took the book and put it away. 
If my mother smiled it was a sign that I had 
better not let Henry see it, even though a stolen 
glimpse at Ellen's had given me a suggestion 
for my choice. That collection was made the 
summer I investigated Romance and read 
poems of passion. I shouldn 't care to tell even 
now all that was in that scrap-book. 



IVY OF THE NEGATIVES 

Maldy was away for the afternoon. That 
was a very rare thing, for Maldy clung to the 
place as if it were a citadel left to her guarding. 
She held all visiting in contempt — partly be- 
cause of her own long experience with visitors 
— and as for her scanty shopping, she sum- 
marily relegated that to my mother, her only 
requirements in garments being that they 
should wear well and should look just like her 
last ones. But at one point my mother de- 
murred. She would not buy Maldy 's shoes — : 
— so she said after a few experiments — and 
have her hobbling around in toe-pinching or 
heel-rubbing foot-leather. So twice a year, 
after Maldy 's needs had for many days been 
pointed out to her, she, with many postpone- 
ments and great final reluctance, went to town 
with my mother. This was one of those occa- 
sions. 

She had looked back many times before she 
231 



232 A STEPDAUGHTER OF THE PRAIRIE 

was out of sight, and we, out of sheer kindli- 
ness to her, had maintained a virtuous state of 
conspicuous idleness on the front porch as long 
as she could see us. It would be a comforting 
vision for her to carry with her to the unac- 
ceptable experiences of the afternoon. 

With Maldy out of sight and a change of at- 
mosphere, we immediately relaxed. Meditation 
fell upon us. We were not really casting about 
for anything lawless to do; but still so rare 
an occasion as this deserved some unwonted 
employment. It would be unappreciative and 
tame not to use it appropriately. Uneasiness 
sat even on Henry, while we all tacitly and in- 
actively awaited a worthy inspiration. 

Our meditation was interrupted by the ap- 
pearance of Ivy Hixon, the daughter of one of 
the renters, coming on one of her borrowing 
errands. I had heard my father say that the 
Hixons were practical Socialists; I don't know 
what he meant, but it was obviously connected 
with borrowing customs. Ivy now carried a 
black-cracked tea-cup in her hand. 

"Mom wanted to know would your ma bor- 
row her some saleratus, ' ' she delivered herself. 



A STEPDAUGHTER OF THE PRAIRIE 233 

Questioning revealed that she wanted some 
baking soda. I arose with as good an imitation 
of my mother's air as I could manage, and led 
the way into the house. Mary followed us, and 
finally John. Henry, who found no delight in 
the freckled Ivy, and had in fact compared her 
appearance to that of a grass-burr, sent an in- 
different glance after us and then took himself 
off to the stables. For Henry the company of 
horses never staled. 

In the big storeroom of the kitchen — a mere 
pantry could not hold stores for a household of 
our numbers — we found the soda, and with as 
many manners as I could take on I gave Ivy a 
liberal helping. 

Ivy lingered to look around. "You've got 
lots of things to eat, ' ' she said. 

That had never seemed to me a cause for 
pride, but I tried to look affluent. However, I 
thought it better to edge Ivy back into the 
kitchen. My mother never talked to the renter 
women about the things we had. But even in 
the kitchen Ivy found much to comment on and 
linger over. I was uneasy at first; my mother 
was full of kindly attentions to the renter f am- 



234 A STEPDAUGHTER OF THE PRAIRIE 

ilies, but the children never came to the house 
much. However, that prohibition appeared to 
belong to Maldy's administration, and to allow 
Ivy to remain for a while seemed to be a privi- 
lege of the day. Soon we were all talking 
freely and enjoying Ivy's admiration of the 
number and size of our kitchen utensils. She 
applauded the kitchen stove especially. Mal- 
dy's stove was no doubt a thing to admire, al- 
though at that time, not having the housekeep- 
ing point of view, we did not realize its praise- 
worthiness. 

A fire had been left, in Maldy's hasty after- 
dinner departure. Even its heat, as we as- 
sisted Ivy to admire it, seemed of a peculiarly 
efficient sort. Assuming technical knowledge, 
we displayed dampers and drafts and oven 
depths. Ivy looked appreciatively into the 
still warm oven. 

"Mom made a cake onst," she said, "when 
Uncle Jake's folks come." 

It was not for us to speak of cakes. 

"Can you cook?" she asked me. 

"Some," I answered conservatively. I had 



A STEPDAUGHTER OF THE PRAIRIE 235 

once mixed up corn-bread nnder Maldy's impa- 
tient direction. 

"I can fry side-meat and potatoes and make 
saleratus biscuits. ' ' 

We had learned that renters lived chiefly on 
hot biscuit; when I add that they called bread 
"light-bread" always, I have sufficiently indi- 
cated their social standing in our eyes. 

"We could make a cake right now," said Ivy. 
She spoke as one suggesting an enterprise, but 
a merely natural one to undertake. I was si- 
lent, as of course Mary was also. 

Said John in a moment, "Let's make a 
cake." John had no culinary self-respect to 
preserve. Anyway, he was thinking less of the 
adventure than of the desirable result. 

"You put eggs in it, and milk and lots of 
sugar and flour and butter if you got it and 
lard if you ain't," said Ivy glibly. "I bet you 
folks got all them things. ' ' 

"Oh, yes," I answered hastily. "WeVe got 
everything. ' ' 

That seemed to be acquiescence, and we stood 
somehow committed to the undertaking. Any- 



236 A STEPDAUGHTER OF THE PRAIRIE 

how, adventure, the more lawless the better, 
had been calling to us. 

However, Ivy Hixon was not going to dic- 
tate to us in our own kitchen. Having made 
the suggestion, her officiousness expanded and 
threatened to take control of us all. I prepared 
to assert myself. 

"You beat the eggs first,' ' said Ivy; "Mom 
took three." 

While I considered, Mary, the methodical, 
climbed to a shelf and brought down a cook- 
book. The possession of a cook-book was 
merely a concession to convention on Maldy's 
part, for she was never seen to use it and had 
been heard to speak contemptuously of it. 
Mary's little forefinger traveled down the in- 
dex column to cakes. 

"There's a good many," she said. "What 
kind do we want? Here's Brown Stone Front 
and Nancy Hanks and Five Egg and Good 
White Cake and Jelly Cake and Chocolate 
Layer and Marble and Fairy Lily " 

"Let's have that," I said. 

Mary turned to it. "Whites of seven eggs, 
cup and a half of sugar, ' ' she began. 



A STEPDAUGHTER OF THE PRAIRIE 237 

"What do you do with the yolks ?" I inter- 
rupted. I had supposed that an egg was a unit 
in cooking. 

Mary laboriously followed through the list 
of items and figures. "It don't say," she said. 

"Mom put 'em in," said Ivy. "Mom's cake 
was yallow. It wasn't no lily cake," she fin- 
ished contemptuously. With the advent of the 
cook-book authority seemed likely to slip from 
her. ' l Mom put three whole eggs in hern. ' ' 

"Let's make a big cake," said John. 

"Read the five-egg one," I dictated. 

"Five eggs beaten separately " began 

Mary. 

"That's awful funny," said Ivy. We all 
looked dubious, in fact. 

Mary finished out the proportions of the 
cake, conventional enough, I suppose. The 
final statement that the recipe would make a 
very large cake was decisive for everyone. 

"All right," I said briskly. I really was not, 
for my part, eager for the result, but the situa- 
tion began to please me. "John, you fix up the 
fire, and don't take Maldy's cobs. Mary, we've 
got to wash our hands first.'*' That was not 



238 A STEPDAUGHTER OF THE PRAIRIE 

sheer virtue; a look at Ivy's had suggested it. 
Ivy joined us in common ablution, and, I think, 
saw the complexion of her hands for the first 
time in many a day. 

"We must clean our finger-nails,'' added 
Mary gently, to my surprise. Ivy plainly 
thought that unnecessary, but followed suit, 
matching the novel enterprise from her own 
experience, however, with, "Mom digs out the 
baby's nails sometimes." 

But, that concession to elegance over, Ivy 
quickly resumed her place again. I turned 
from the towel to find her setting out a flat 
crock for a mixing bowl, a row of five tea-cups, 
and a fork. 

"What are those for?" I asked. 

' ' To beat the eggs in. The book says so. ' ' 

I had never seen a process like that, and was 
doubtful; but still many an operation went on 
in the kitchen on which I did not trouble to cast 
my eye. I was not in a position to contradict, 
but I tried at least to awe Ivy by reaching down 
an egg-beater instead of the fork. Ivy looked 
at it a moment, tested its movement and, unim- 
pressed, accepted it as a matter of course. She 



A STEPDAUGHTER OF THE PRAIRIE 239 

hung over the cook-book, business in her mien, 
energy radiating from her elbows. Nature had 
dealt but meagerly with Ivy. Her hair was 
sandy — sandy to the touch, I fancied — her face 
was sandy, her hands looked sandy. Her dress, 
to my embarrassment, was an old one of my 
own ; I tried to act unconscious of the fact. It 
hung loosely from her round shoulders and — 
although she was nearly as old as I — was far 
too long for her; but, as she was barefooted, 
that was a good thing. Her scratched feet 
looked sandy, too. Her hair was tied with a 
white string, which was braided in for two or 
three inches from the end. I had suggested 
that means of security to Ellen when she 
braided my hair, but she did not accept the 
suggestion, although it would doubtless have 
saved me many a reproof. Whether because of 
this device or not, Ivy's scrawny little braid 
turned sharply outward from her meager 
shoulders and, with her quick, jerky move- 
ments, bobbed about like a question mark in- 
cessantly questioning. Before we got through 
with our enterprise that curled-up arc of hair 



240 A STEPDAUGHTER OF THE PRAIRIE 

seemed to me to be making the cake, it was so 
active, so ubiquitous. 

Ivy turned briskly from the cook-book and 
disappeared into the storeroom. She was back 
almost instantly. 

"Say, there ain't but six eggs, and if we'd 
take them they'd know for sure. You go out 
and get some more. I bet they's a plenty." 

Dignity compelled me to pass the order on to 
John. Assuming initiative, I proceeded to get 
out the other ingredients, but always with Ivy 
at my elbow, making additional suggestions. 
"When you're gettin' get a plenty. That's 
what Aunt Em says. But Mom says when you 

ain't got any money Say, ain't you folks 

got lots of sugar! Say, you could have cake 
every day." 

Her eyes saw every article in the storeroom, 
and her tongue commented without trammel. 
Between times she issued orders with freedom 
and decision. I was always just going to, but 
Ivy steadily forestalled me. It seemed as if, 
whenever I turned to do a thing, Ivy's arc of 
braid was always bobbing just ahead of me. 
Information which I imparted to her became 



A STEPDAUGHTER OF THE PRAIRIE 241 

her own as completely as if it had never been 
mine. Within a few minntes she knew all the 
household equipment as well as Mary and I put 
together. It need not be supposed that I ac- 
quiesced readily in this system of precedence, 
but when there is no crevice in the front of au- 
thority where one can interpose opposition, and 
when one is hampered by hospitality besides, 
where is one going to begin to assert her inde- 
pendence ? 

The mixing spoon was hardly ever out of 
Ivy's hands. She stirred and beat and sifted 
and stirred, in a housewifely ecstasy of crea- 
tion. The words "a plenty' ' rolled lusciously 
on her tongue constantly when she caught sight 
of our household stores. Only steady self-con- 
trol kept her from altering the proportion of 
ingredients when abundance of butter or sugar 
came into view. It seemed a pity not to use 
more when there was "a plenty.' ' Her im- 
agination reached forward, and she hinted at 
something else to be done when the cake was 
off our hands. But this time even John did not 
rise to the suggestion. 

I should not have supposed that one person 



242 A STEPDAUGHTER OF THE PRAIRIE 

could find sufficient orders for three. I found 
myself obeying in a sort of bewilderment. 
Mary was kept busy washing dishes, because, 
as Ivy said, the elders would not want to find 
the kitchen "all gaumed up when they come 
back. ' ' It did seem wise to remove our traces. 
The eggs were beaten separately — that is, in- 
dividually — and the process took some time. 
John thought it unnecessary, but Ivy overruled 
him with the words of the book. For one of 
comparatively limited acquaintance with litera- 
ture, Ivy had remarkable reverence for the 
printed word. She seemed to take pride in hav- 
ing cooking thus connected with her stinted ac- 
complishment of reading. 

At last everything was in, stirred and beaten, 
and beaten and stirred. Everybody, even John, 
had been allowed to take a hand at this ; but it 
was Ivy's freckled little arms which gave the 
last loving strokes. At this moment Henry 
strolled in. 

We had got so used to Ivy that we had for- 
gotten to miss Henry. But John, going out to 
find another egg to replace one which somebody 
had dropped on the floor — we regretted it, but 



A STEPDAUGHTER OF THE PRAIRIE 243 

Ivy said there were plenty more — had men- 
tioned to Henry that an enterprise was afoot 
within. After a little time for consideration, 
Henry decided to enter. He came loafing in, 
his hands in his pockets and a general air of 
mature leisure about him. I had just got out 
a cake-pan and Ivy had taken it from me and 
was buttering it with flying whisks of her fin- 
gers. She was putting a good deal of butter 
on it. 

Henry eyed the process a moment with re- 
motely critical air. I think it was the first time 
he had noticed the operation at all, but it was 
for him to suggest improvement, now that he 
was here. 

"You're putting too much butter on that," 
he said briefly, without introduction. 

Ivy paused and looked at him, every freckle 
darting out surprise. She rubbed her nose with 
the back of her hand and eyed him above her 
buttery fingers. 

"You never made no cake," she answered. 

"Cake shouldn't taste of butter," said 
Henry, speaking calmly but succinctly, as an 



244 A STEPDAUGHTER OF THE PRAIRIE 

expert authority. "It'll make it fall," he 
added. 

Ivy, determined not to be impressed, contin- 
ued to eye him as she ran her ringers round 
and round the pan. Henry took one hand from 
its pocket, lifted the mixing-spoon and let the 
batter drip from it while he scrutinized the 
compound intelligently. 

"It's too thin," he delivered judgment. 

"It's just like the book says, I guess," re- 
turned Ivy forcibly. Ivy was really misnamed. 
We were all responsible for the cake, but Ivy 
seemed to be its natural defender. 

His attention called to the cook-book, Henry 
turned to peruse it. He wore the air of a pass- 
ing authority who had no personal interest in 
pointing out error. He did not keep us wait- 
ing long, however, before he spoke again. 

"Lots of cake have raisins in them. Let's 
put raisins in this." 

Let us! Even we who knew Henry well had 
never seen him adopt an exploit with greater 
promptness. But then we were used to Henry ; 
many a time had he gathered us to his banner 



A STEPDAUGHTER OF THE PRAIRIE 245 

as sheep to a cause. Ivy alone found him a 
novelty. 

"The book never said nothin' about puttin' 
in no raisins,' ' she said. "This ain't that kind 
of cake." 

With the air of one who was bloodied but 
spiritually unbowed, she stirred the cake again 
and bade me look at the fire. A few minutes 
before she would have given the order to John. 
Whether she acknowledged it or not, masculin- 
ity seemed to be in a stage of readjustment. 

Mary, returning from obeying Henry's or- 
der, reported that there were no raisins in 
store. It was embarrassing to us to admit that 
there was anything we did not have. Henry 
considered. Was there a substitute? He de- 
tained the putting of the cake into the oven, 
with a glance and a wave of the hand, while he 
meditated. 

"Raisins are nothing but grapes,' ' mused 
John, "but grapes aren't ripe yet." 

Henry turned his eye on the window. The 
rest of us indicated the stages of our mental 
processes by discussion. Henry merely an- 
nounced his results. 



246 A STEPDAUGHTER OF THE PRAIRIE 

1 l We '11 get some cherries,' ' he said. 

Ivy, who had been impatiently heeling and 
toeing beside the kitchen table, burst forth, "I 
never heard of no cherries in no cake. I bet 
they'd spoil it." 

"They'll make it thicker," said Henry, con- 
ceding a reply to her evident depth of feeling. 

Ivy continued to stand by the table, smooth- 
ing and patting the surface of her cherished 
cake, while Henry marshaled the rest of us 
out to the Early Richmond cherry-trees. As a 
precaution he added her to the party, although 
she declared that the cake would fall while we 
were gone. 

It took only a few minutes, though, for the 
five of us to gather and seed a quart or more of 
cherries. Henry dumped the lot, reeking juice, 
into the batter and stirred them in. 

"It's thinner 'n ever," wailed Ivy, "and it 
looks like all git out." 

Henry scrutinized it carefully. "It isn't any 
thinner, but it's too thin yet. We'll get some 
more cherries." 

This time we got two quarts. Henry stirred 
them in. 



A STEPDAUGHTER OF THE PRAIRIE Ml 

Another wail broke from Ivy. "It's thin- 
ner 'n ever," she almost sobbed. "You've done 
and spoiled it." 

"You didn't put flour enough into this," said 
Henry. "That's what's the matter." 

' ' We put all the book said, ' ' I answered. Be- 
tween grief and wrath Ivy was almost beyond 
speech. 

"Well, it takes more of some kinds than 
others. I guess this is a thin kind. ' ' 

We put in three more cups of flour, while Ivy 
stood in the background, a mute angry spirit 
of protest. When the flour was all in we each 
inserted — not the first time — a finger at the 
edge of the batter and tasted our compound. It 
tasted queer and floury. Ivy frankly made a 
face. 

"You didn't put enough sugar in this," said 
Henry. i ' Cakes take a lot of sugar. ' ' 

"We put in all the book said," we answered 
once more. 

"It ain't sweet enough," said Henry, tasting 
again. ' ' We '11 put in more sugar. ' ' 

We put in two more cups of sugar. The bat- 
ter was now almost running over the crock, and 



248 A STEPDAUGHTER OF THE PRAIRIE 

needed very careful stirring. The cake-pan 
which had been ready before, was now out of 
the question. Henry found a small dishpan, 
and bade me grease it. Mary washed the other 
and put it away. John made up the fire once 
more, and the cake went into the oven. We 
thought it polite to offer Ivy the crock to 
scrape, but she briefly declined it. Half an 
hour before each of us had had an eye on that 
crock, but now no one cared for it. Mary 
washed it and put it away. She also washed 
up the table and everything else, and as far as 
we could see there was nothing to tell the tale 
of us except the cake in the oven. 

At the end of ten minutes, as the cake did 
not seem to be near baked, we settled down in 
various ways. No further enterprise seemed 
desirable. We really wished that Ivy would go 
home, but, as she did not seem inclined to do so, 
I read her All Baba. She interrupted occa- 
sionally to say, "I bet that ain't never hap- 
pened. ' ' Her attitude surprised me ; I did not 
mind its apparent discourtesy, but I did not see 
why anyone should demand fact in a narrative. 

Any occupation we had on hand was inter- 



A STEPDAUGHTER OF THE PRAIRIE 

rupted frequently while we looked into the 
oven. Mary took a doll and went about some 
serious maternal business. The rest of us col- 
lectively looked into the oven every three min- 
utes. If that cake had ever intended to do it- 
self credit, it lost its chance through the embar- 
rassment of our steady watching. As it was, 
the baking process was curious. We watched 
eagerly for the moment of rising, but it never 
came. It did once break its temporary shell to 
spout up on the middle with a small geyser-like 
formation, distinguished from the hopeless de- 
pression of the rest of the surface. After that 
it sank and sank until it seemed likely to go 
through the bottom of the oven. The substance 
of the whole was of such a consistency that it 
would have taken a chemical analysis to tell 
whether it was baked or not. Like other Ben- 
jamin Wests, we nearly decimated the newest 
broom for straws — each of us used several each 
time we opened the oven door — but every time 
we withdrew them, gummy and unpalatable. 

Time was wearing rapidly away. They 
might be home at any moment. Ivy declined 



250 A STEPDAUGHTER OF THE PRAIRIE 

any further tales and crouched steadfastly by 
the oven door. 

At last the cake began to recede from the 
sides of the pan, and Henry, returning from a 
brief visit to his pony, announced that it was 
all drying up and must be taken out imme- 
diately. Anticipation swelled among us. We 
forgot to watch the drive. Eagerness secured 
a burnt hand for each of us. But at last the 
cake was transferred from the oven to the 
kitchen table. One last problem arose. How 
did one take a cake from the pan? The natu- 
ral thing seemed to be to take it by the little 
knob in the center and lift it out. That proved 
unsuccessful. Henry and Ivy each had a the- 
ory; it is needless to say that Henry's was to be 
tried first, even over Ivy's final protest. 

"Now you all stand back," Henry was say- 
ing, as he selected a knife, "and I'll " 

Voices and wheels were heard outside. We 
looked at each other in consternation — con- 
sternation quite out of proportion to the of- 
fence. Panic fell upon us. Henry snatched up 
the cake, pan and all, and with his usual quick- 
ness of resource made for the regions of the 



A STEPDAUGHTER OF THE PRAIRIE 251 

kitchen garden, which lay near. It was on the 
other side of the house from the drive, and was 
screened from it by some lilac bushes. At the 
very nearest place to the house a bit of soft, 
fine-delved ground lay waiting a later sowing 
of something, turnips probably. Henry seized 
a hoe which was conveniently at hand, made a 
hole in the soft earth, and in an instant that 
cake, with all its promise unfulfilled and its 
suspense still unanswered, was in its tomb. 
The dishpan was thrown to a convenient place 
under the lilac bushes and, the whole affair 
cleared up, we turned back to welcome the 
home-comers with as interested an air as if 
we had spent the afternoon merely waiting for 
their return. 

Ivy had stood looking on at the interment as 
if she were the embodiment of all possible 
mourners. Tragedy sat on her brow, and grief 
trembled on her lips. The moment anticipated 
all the afternoon was snatched from her as the 
child of her hands went under the soil. Even 
her braid had uncurled itself and hung straight 
and pendulous as any braid. As we turned 
away, I had a glimpse of pursed-up lips and 



252 A STEPDAUGHTER OF THE PRAIRIE 

hard-winking eyes, and I suspected that a tear 
fell on the unworthy grave of that cherry cake, 
the first and last of its kind. 

For us it was all over. We should have liked 
to see how that cake tasted; but Maldy always 
got an unusually good supper when she came 
back from town, as if to show her scorn of all 
she had seen in her absence. Anyway, we had 
had doubts about the cake from the first. I 
never had believed that we could make a cake, 
even when we were doing it. 

As we went into the house again, everybody 
eagerly assisting in carrying in the packages — 
with surreptitious squeezes and fingerings to 
help surmises as to contents — I saw Ivy dart- 
ing homeward through the orchard. Her braid 
hopped up and down on her shoulders, and her 
slim skirt wrapped and flapped about her thin 
legs. The impetuosity of her movement sug- 
gested more than mere hurry, I thought, re- 
membering certain impassioned moments of my 
own. 

The evening went off very well, considering 
everything. After my mother had been away 
for a whole afternoon, we always had a very 



A STEPDAUGHTER OF THE PRAIRIE 253 

good time in the evening, and were allowed to 
sit up a little later than usual. And yet I went 
to bed with a sense of something impending. 
Certain matters had already called for remark. 
Henry explained that we had the fire on in or- 
der to have it ready when they came home. 
Such thoughtfulness should have brought out 
approbation, but Maldy made no comment. As 
for the cup of soda — well, Ivy Hixon had come 
for it, but why she went away without it no 
one knew. Maldy was no questioner, I will say 
that for her. But she went about the kitchen 
that evening with a roving eye, which promised 
no good for us. Our sin, which had seemed 
mild in the beginning, hardly equal to the occa- 
sion in fact, began to assume the appalling pro- 
portions of a crime. I went to bed meditating 
confession. 

Mary lay still for a while in her usual little 
fashion, and then went off to sleep. Our room 
was at the back of the house, and I could hear 
Maldy moving about below, setting all ready 
for the morning. Who knew what she might 
be discovering? Had we put away the flour- 
sifter and closed the sugar-bin and restored the 



254 A STEPDAUGHTER OF THE PRAIRIE 

baking-powder to its place? I followed her 
movements in my imagination, picturing what 
she was looking at. Her steps seemed to grow 
heavier and more portentous. What was she 
seeing now? 

Even when everything grew quiet under- 
neath, I still listened for signs to reassure or 
terrorize. I sat up in bed embracing my knees, 
while my strained attention was fixed below. 
But everything was so silent down there that 
my alertness finally relaxed and my eyes wan- 
dered to the moon-lighted spaces below my win- 
dow. Even the corner of the kitchen garden, 
which I could see, had a sort of agreeableness, 
with the moonlight and the moon-made 
shadows upon it. I mused a while, watching 
the glorified lawn, and finally, with elbows on 
knees and chin on hands, began to make up a 
story about what I was going to do when I was 
twenty. 

Suddenly I sprang from the bed and ran to 
the window. Out in that garden corner some- 
one was moving. I couldn't see very plainly 
at first, but undoubtedly there was a moving 
figure there. How had Maldy ever discovered? 



A STEPDAUGHTER OF THE PRAIRIE 255 

But as I looked I saw that it was Ivy's. She 
was groping around for the hoe we had used 
in the afternoon. I was indignant. Of course 
somebody would see her — and then! She did 
not find the hoe, and stood for a moment unde- 
cided. Then she dropped to her knees and be- 
gan to dig away at the soft earth with her 
hands. I condemned her entirely. She had got 
us into this, and now she was going to get us 
caught. And digging up cake out of the 
ground, too ! I felt contempt. 

A step sounded heavily on the porch below. 
Maldy always walked with a curious unbend- 
ing tread. She stalked straight out by the 
path and around by the lilac bushes. Now Ivy 
Hixon had done it! She, too, heard by this 
time, and sat back on her heels to listen. Thus 
she was when Maldy rounded the lilacs and 
came upon her. Then she jumped up with a 
cry. I was almost sorry for her then, for I 
knew Maldy 's summary handling of the renter 
children. Still, Ivy had brought this on her- 
self. 

Maldy questioned abruptly and gruffly, stand- 
ing with her hands on her hips and her elbows 



256 A STEPDAUGHTER OF THE PRAIRIE 

squared. Ivy answered, her speech all running 
together, until it ended in a high little wail, 
with a tragic gesture toward the ground at her 
feet. Maldy questioned further, her attitude 
tentative. Ivy answered again, her voice each 
time running up to its pathetic little cry at the 
end, and her hands making their tragic move- 
ment. This was not the effective Ivy of the 
afternoon. I could imagine her ending with, 
"And I never got none of it!" To my relief, 
however, Maldy seemed to be relaxing. She 
spoke briefly but with reserve. 

Presently she turned toward the house, Ivy 
following her, evidently at her bidding. Ivy 
waited on this side of the lilac bushes, not far 
from my window, while Maldy went into the 
kitchen to get the cracked cup and the soda, I 
supposed. I really was relieved, though not 
on Ivy's account alone. 

Maldy returned, her bearing still amicable. 
But what was this she was bringing? The cup 
of soda, to be sure, and with it the remnant of 
the fresh sponge cake she had beaten up for 
supper — and a piece of fruit cake! I nearly 
fell out of the window as it came to view. Fruit 






A STEPDAUGHTER OF THE PRAIRIE 25*7 

cake was Maldy 's choicest and best-concealed 
treasure. I suspected that even my mother 
asked her permission to use it. It was the top- 
most crown of our rarest social occasions. 
Maldy seemed always to have some, but we 
never caught her making it. When I have said 
that we never even asked her for it, I have said 
all. 

She was giving it to Ivy. She said, " Don't 
you eat this to-night, but you put it away and 
have it some time." Then she relapsed into her 
renter-children tone, ' ' Now you better go right 
along home. Don't be hanging around here." 
Ivy went, cutting across the lawn and down 
through the shadowy orchard spaces. Her dis- 
posing of the sponge cake as she went did not 
seem to interfere with her speed. 

The next morning Henry himself slipped the 
dishpan down to the yards and washed it in 
the watering-trough. Unfortunately Maldy 
was in the kitchen when he cautiously brought 
it in, and her eye required an explanation of 
him. 

"Why, I took this out yesterday to pick 
cherries in, ' ' he began. 



258 A STEPDAUGHTER OF THE PRAIRIE 

' i Huuf, ' ' said Maldy, and turned her back on 
him. She gave the dishpan a proper washing 
with soap and hot water, and hung it up in its 
place without another word. 



A DAUGHTER OF THE PRAIRIE 

Mrs. Harris had come to see us again. Mrs. 
Harris was one of the periodical visitors I men- 
tioned before. I don't know why she came, nor 
why she came so often, nor why she stayed so 
long. I don't really know where she lived, ex- 
cept that it was somewhere far from us, where 
conditions of life were far more advanced than 
they were on the prairie — at least that is what 
she gave us to understand. I have a notion that 
she was a widow ; her freedom of movement and 
her lack of imperative calls on her time would 
indicate that. When she came to see us there 
never seemed to he any reason why she should 
go home. I don't think that she had any chil- 
dren, either. The peerless children whose vir- 
tues she used to mention at apt moments as 
worthy of our emulation, seem to have been 
nieces and nephews. She once brought one of 
these nieces out with her on a visit, and we 

played with the girl on terms of remote toler- 

259 



260 A STEPDAUGHTER OF THE PRAIRIE 

ance until we found by some accidental com- 
parison of experience that we — it was hard to 
believe — had also been held up as examples for 
emulation to her and her family. After that 
we got along very well indeed. 

When a letter arrived from Mrs. Harris an- 
nouncing her approaching arrival, my mother 
used to look over at my father with a funny 
little twitch of her eyebrows — no more; and 
my father would give a faint shrug to his 
shoulders and slide down a little farther in his 
chair — no more. And neither of them thought 
that we noticed it or, noticing, would draw any 
deductions. 

Anyway, there was never a chance to ask if 
there were a Mrs. Harris. We had no oppor- 
tunity to doubt it, either when she was there, 
or when she was gone, or when she was about 
to come back. She brought with her an outside 
element, such as no one else carried. The most 
of our visitors subordinated or ignored their 
own natural circumstances for the moment, 
while they interested themselves in ours. They 
either felt or simulated a polite regard for the 
place they were visiting and the affairs of their 



A STEPDAUGHTER OF THE PRAIRIE 261 

hosts. It is true they were sometimes impelled 
to institute comparisons with the East, such as 
hinted at lacks or drawbacks in our habitat. 
But generally courtesy bridled their expres- 
sion; and they kindly saw what merits we had, 
and made conversation about them. 

But it was not so with Mrs. Harris. Her talk 
ran on as if she had not left her rootage in 
Pennsylvania or Ohio, or wherever it was. 
Her topics were precisely the same as they 
would have been had my mother been her 
neighbor in the two- story Queen Anne resi- 
dence next door to her own. None of our in- 
terests deflected the current of her thoughts or 
opinions. I used to listen, in the early days 
when my curiosity about the active world first 
awoke, to her steady discourse, thinking it 
might contain picturings of life. But I found 
that Mrs. Harris knew no such thing as imper- 
sonal interest. Her provinciality was rooted 
deep. To her nothing was interesting in itself 
— only as it was interesting to herself. I found 
that she would not serve my purposes at all. 

There was one thing in particular in which 
Mrs. Harris showed her exotic quality. If 



262 A STEPDAUGHTER OF THE PRAIRIE 

there was any one thing which distinguished 
prairie life, it was that no one talked much 
about money. Such talk was simply not there 
at all. I suppose there must have been a cur- 
rent of consideration of costs and prices and 
markets running along under the more impor- 
tant matters of life. Certainly there were some 
things we could have and some we could not. 
But who wanted luxury, anyway? We did not 
know what the relative financial standing of 
our visitors was — or even of our neighbors, for 
that matter, although we guessed that some 
were poor and others were not. 

With Mrs. Harris it was different. Poor was 
not a mysterious, half -romantic word with her. 
She knew every man's income, or had her own 
shrewd estimate of it. "He is rich ,, often 
dropped from her respectful lips. She could 
discourse for hours — and did — on the furnish- 
ing of her friends ' houses and their physical 
equipment for living. She mentioned prices 
and values. Figures came aptly to her tongue, 
and she knew what people paid for things; 
much seemed to depend on that. As for us, we 
heard prices mentioned, to be sure, but as prac- 



A STEPDAUGHTER OF THE PRAIRIE 263 

tical facts, not as matter for admiration. Not 
even the men who bought land talked so much 
about money as Mrs. Harris did. 

That and comparison of East and West were 
her most natural themes ; I should say contrast, 
for in her own phrase there was no compari- 
son. Nobody's language but Mrs. Harris's — 
and only large quantities of hers — could ade- 
quately express her pitying condemnation of 
everything west of the Ohio line. Nothing but 
a roving disposition and a recurrent touch of 
asthma would have brought her out beyond 
that border of civilization. Her steady disap- 
proval of us brought little disturbance to our 
fireside or our veranda, however. My father 
surreptitiously read and my mother placidly 
sewed, only dropping sometimes a quiet little 
whimsicality into an accidental interstice in the 
monody of Mrs. Harris. We, with the easy 
superiority of childhood to maturity, went on 
indifferent, aware of a sort of atmospheric dis- 
quiet, but undisturbed by it. So much adult 
talk was negligible that this was hardly distin- 
guishable from the rest. 

But this visit of Mrs. Harris was different 



264 A STEPDAUGHTER OF THE PRAIRIE 

from the others — different for me, I mean. For 
this year, being quite old and having finished 
the Fifth Reader, and all the mental arithmetic 
and chronological recapitulations that were 
taught at the white schoolhouse on the other 
side of the section, I was to be sent away to 
learn something more. And, Mrs. Harris 's visit 
falling aptly at the right time, she was to con- 
vey me east with her to a place for further in- 
formation. That now gave Mrs. Harris a fac- 
titious interest for me as a means to a glorious 
end. 

Nobody can tell what those days are before 
you first go away to school. Anyway, so many 
people know already that it is not necessary to 
try to tell. You are oscillated back and forth 
between bewildering extremes of feeling. You 
turn from contemplating a farewell deep and 
long as time to anticipate a future luminous, 
alluring, an ecstasy-compelling combination of 
the certain and the unknown. For the first time 
in your life you are conscious of a great begin- 
ning of things ; everything up to this point has 
been merely a continuity. As you look back on 



A STEPDAUGHTER OF THE PRAlRIE 265 

it, it seems undramatic, unexciting. But ah, 
the future! 

No wonder I tolerated Mrs. Harris. I even 
questioned her. I alternated in my own con- 
versation between somewhat exacting practical 
suggestion regarding my equipment, and vague 
forecasts of imminent glories. One thing was 
certain : I should not come back the same person 
I went away. I felt as if I were allowing my 
family their last intercourse with one who 
would soon be no more. At the same time I 
was enjoying certain special attentions and 
tacit remission of duties, which showed how 
pleasant home might be made all the time if the 
elders would only take responsibility less seri- 
ously. 

It was a part of this general indulgence, I 
suppose, that my suggestion to accompany my 
father on a long afternoon drive in that last 
week received thoughtful attention. My desire 
proved to be only the nucleus for other desires, 
however ; I could not have surmised that I was 
originating so attractive a notion. Mrs. Har- 
ris suddenly perceived that she would like to 
go along. My father threw an appealing 



266 A STEPDAUGHTER OF THE PRAIRIE 

glance at my mother, and she also decided to 
go. Another minute added a visiting uncle, 
and Ellen, at his urging. The driving party 
was complete — without me ! I stood aghast at 
my own results. Where was my late-grown im- 
portance! My mother caught my look and 
found a way. 

"How would you like to ride Pete and go 
along beside us f ' ' she asked. ' ' That would do, 
wouldn't it!" she appealed to my father. 

Yes, it would do. For me it would barely do, 
as I seemed to be crowded out of the grown-up 
party. Still it would be going somewhere, and 
if anything interesting occurred I should be a 
participator in it. I saddled Pete — with Ellen 's 
old saddle — and was ready. There had been 
a time when I rode Henry's saddle, but that 
period was behind me. Pete, too, was an in- 
heritance. But never mind ; the day of my own 
things was about to begin. 

I had done what I could to make Pete my own 
by renaming him, when Henry, after training 
and playing with Old Kate's son, Charlemagne, 
from his earliest colthood, adopted him for his 
riding horse and left the pony to me. I ac- 



A STEPDAUGHTER OF THE PRAIRIE 267 

cepted the discard with unwonted gratitude, 
and called him Giafar. As Pete seemed un- 
aware of it, it probably did him no harm. I 
always had to say Pete before he attended to 
me, anyway. He had come to be known in the 
family as Pete Giafar. 

It was an early September day, of course^ a 
day to make one think of ripe grapes and of 
drowning out bumble-bees, and ripe Bartlett 
pears falling on the yellowing grass, and 
Hydrangea blossoms beginning to turn russet 
and red, and of the first day of school. Sun- 
flowers and all their smaller and yellower kin 
stood golden in neglected hollows, and the 
misty purple of massed tickle-grass crowded 
occasional fence-corners. Even in the early 
afternoon the air was vivid — a sort of com- 
panionable air. 

Although I had hardly acknowledged it in the 
beginning, this was really an adventure for me. 
In prospect of the great things that were in 
store I had chosen it merely to fill in time, and 
at first I only trailed along after the others, 
dreaming of the next week, and the next after 
that, and the next, and — ah me! Who could 



268 A STEPDAUGHTER OF THE PRAIRIE 

tell it? But gradually as we followed along the 
corn-bordered roads with their variegation of 
hill and hollow I became aware that this hope 
of future joy was only a substratum for pres- 
ent happiness. Of course it is always a good 
thing while you are enjoying one pleasure to 
know that another is following on its heels. At 
this moment everything was the more satisfac- 
tory because I believed that that satisfaction 
was likely to be a continuous state. But, after 
all, this situation itself was an interesting, al- 
most an exciting, experience. Riding Pete 
Giafar was no novelty, but riding away on a 
long trip like this was. I didn't even know 
where we were going, for after two or three 
miles we took a direction that was new to me — 
at least I could not remember having gone that 
way before. My independent position com- 
bined the entertainment, such as it was, of 
adult society, with some of the delights of soli- 
tude. Sometimes a level stretch invited the 
pony to canter and me to show off my horse- 
manship, and I darted ahead, even putting a 
hill or two between me and the others, and pre- 
tended that I was going alone. Sometimes I 



A STEPDAUGHTER OF THE PRAIRIE 269 

lagged far behind. The air, as I say, was com- 
panionable, and the country was full of that 
happy announcement of completeness which 
early fall brings. Sunshine and dreams and a 
pony — what more could anyone ask? 

Presently the country grew distinctly strange 
to me. We passed houses I had never seen be- 
fore. Bits of woods, scanty enough, sprang up 
across our path, and an occasional creek, 
ploughing down between its banks and carrying 
away as much as it could of its loosely packed 
basin. Even our most eager partizans had lit- 
tle to say of our streams. Interest in the new 
neighborhood made me ride up beside my fa- 
ther to see what he was saying about it. He 
was not saying much. The conversation was 
chiefly in the hands of Mrs. Harris. Mrs. Harris 
was a paragrapher in dialogue. My uncle was 
teasing Ellen in jocular asides, and my father 
was throwing in explanatory comments as op- 
portunity offered. But Mrs. Harris was para- 
graphing. 

Mrs. Harris could be called a monochromatic 
talker. Whatever she was saying, one got very 
much the same impression from it. When she 



£70 A STEPDAUGHTER OF THE PRAIRIE 

paused occasionally and my mother dropped in 
a quiet, humorous little remark — calculated, I 
am sure, to keep my father and uncle patient — 
it was as if all the sound in the world had 
stopped for a minute. My mother's voice 
seemed like silence itself in comparison. And 
yet I am sure that Mrs. Harris was not a loud 
talker. It was only her ideas that were noisy. 

She was talking now, appropriately, about 
the country. I listened perforce, because I was 
watching to snap up the first chance for throw- 
ing in some questions of my own. When Mrs. 
Harris was talking that required great alert- 
ness on the part of a child. My father some- 
times had better luck. He had managed to say 
that the object of his expedition was to nego- 
tiate for some seed wheat. 

"Do people out here really have something 
to sell?" Mrs. Harris was exclaiming. "It 
doesn't seem possible." That was the begin : 
ning of a paragraph. My father turned his 
far-sighted prairie eyes upon the acres of tall, 
richly-eared corn to his left, and then flicked 
Pete playfully with the whip and dropped an 
amused glance on Ellen, 



A STEPDAUGHTER OF THE PRAIRIE 271 

Mrs. Harris's ideas were what might be 
called extra-urban. Her next paragraph be- 
gan, "I wonder whether this country will ever 
be really inhabitable. I suppose you will have 
towns in the course of time, but you do sacrifice 
so much while you are waiting," with sympa- 
thetic plaintiveness. She went on to set forth 
the privations of the life we knew, "so far 
from everything, ' ' she reiterated. 

"I certainly feel sorry for you, doing with- 
out so many things.' ' She proceeded to enu- 
merate some of them. My own substratum of 
happy expectation had consisted largely of 
some of these very things, but as I attended to 
Mrs. Harris's forceful listing of them it sud- 
denly crumbled away. Were they, after all, so 
attractive as I had thought? 

We rounded a corner in our road just at this 
point, and on one side turned away from the 
bordering corn-land. To our right now lay 
open prairie, the first we had touched. My 
father looked across it with the look he always 
gave to the prairie. I had seen it before and 
knew it. 

"Isn't it the most desolate-looking thing!" 



272 A STEPDAUGHTER OF THE PRAIRIE 

exclaimed Mrs. Harris. " I don't see how any- 
one stands it. If it were only plowed up it 
would be a little better. But it certainly is a 
dreary spectacle this way. And such a waste ! ' ' 

"It won't be a waste long," answered my fa- 
ther quietly. "This will all be broken up this 
fall. It is the last big piece of grass in the 
county," he added regretfully. 

Everybody was quiet a minute, even Mrs. 
Harris. Suddenly I struck Pete Giafar with 
my little whip, and wheeled away from the 
road. I turned to look at my mother, and she 
nodded acquiescence. The destination my fa- 
ther had pointed out was only a mile farther 
on, anyway; and, besides, nothing happened to 
anyone out on the prairie. I flicked Pete again, 
and we headed out into the open grass. The 
others drove on, and I heard Mrs. Harris be- 
gin to talk again. I caught the words "useless" 
and ' ' dreary ' ' and ' ' empty, ' ' and I sped on. 

Indignation shortened my sight at first. It is 
always a novel sensation to find yourself sud 
denly a keen partisan of something to which 
you had always supposed yourself indifferent. 
The prairie — steadily decreasing sections of it 



A STEPDAUGHTER OF THE PRAIRIE 273 

— had lain near us all my short life, and I had 
regarded it first as deplorable and then as only 
tolerable. Later still I began to find elements 
of delight in it, as on the wonderful day when 
I rode off in a mover wagon to a green world 
of joy. That discovery I began to regard as 
evidence of catholicity of taste in me. I was 
rather proud of my discernment of values. 
And yet I suspect that there was in my small 
mind even then a little patronage of the great 
acres of grass. Mrs. Harris's scorn now 
whiffled me about in one bewildering instant. 
With her behind me and the prairie before me, 
I committed myself to a partisanship I had 
never yet felt. 

It was a day and a moment to draw such 
allegiance. The sun lay golden on the stretch 
of grass before me. Acre upon acre it lay 
spread out. I ignored the cornfields behind 
and to the left of me, and looked only straight 
ahead. 

September had been at work here, too. No 
harvest had been taken from this natural 
growth, and the grass stood long and uncut. 
Ripeness lay on it, as it lay on the browning 



274 A STEPDAUGHTER OF THE PRAIRIE 

cornfields. A mellowness that did not belong 
to the sunshine alone was in the color of the 
whole. The green had been touched with 
brown and with yellow; and in the lower 
clumps of grass-blades I could see, as the wind 
tossed the taller stems aside, hints of the 
golden rose which it would all bear in winter. 
The whole expanse carried a vague richness of 
color which the clear, fresh green of the earlier 
months did not have. Even that gracious day 
in June held no loveliness greater than this. 

To-day there lay over it all the warm Sep- 
tember haze, a herald of Indian summer glories 
that were to be. The crisp September wind 
swept the grass aside in places, or plowed into 
its depths, or smoothed it all one way, as if 
passing a hand over it. That made the 
diaphanous haze itself seem to lift and float 
and settle again, as if poising itself on the 
grass tops and playing at lightness with them. 
It was so ethereal a thing that one could 
scarcely say where it was and where it was not, 
where it touched and where it vanished. It 
deepened in the distance and conserved the 



A STEPDAUGHTER OF THE PRAIRIE 275 

sunlight, adding golden quality to my whole 
view. 

Pete and I raced and raced toward this dis- 
tance. I suppose our pace was really moderate, 
but the swishing grasses and the meeting wind 
made it seem tremendous. The prairie rolled 
out beyond us, rising on upslopes and descend- 
ing into valleys gilded with September flowers. 
There lay whole masses of yellow, as if sum- 
mer, knowing her time was short, had thrown 
out all her remaining color at once. It was the 
yellow season of the prairie year. One can't 
tell what a softness of swell and curve and 
what sweet loveliness of outline the prairie 
gives to whatever it clothes. Could there ever 
have been a time when I said "only green 
hills"? My eyes followed from hilltop to suc- 
ceeding hilltop, led on and on by their fairness 
alone. Each one promised the beauty of the 
next one, and carried my look forward until it 
reached the upward slope which led to the hori- 
zon. When I found that, I came back to the 
nearer distance and began again to follow the 
grass on from slope to slope until I reached 
that horizon line once more. Even that did 



276 A STEPDAUGHTER OF THE PRAIRIE 

not stop my thought — for I now knew more of 
horizons than I had once known — and I could 
fancy more hills following on around the long 
curve of the earth. 

I kept on the higher ridges to widen my view, 
and rode on toward the gently changing sky- 
line. I could conceive of nothing greater be- 
yond it than other green hills and yet others. 
I had a sense of joyous possession of this ex- 
panse, as if something in it belonged to me, 
something superior to any practical ownership. 
It was to be plowed up, was it? Then perhaps 
I should be the last one so to ride and enjoy. 
This wonderful emptiness, which was a posi- 
tive quality and not a negative one, a kind of 
self-ownership of the prairie, would give way 
to an occupation which was far emptier. So I 
mused vaguely, condemning cornfields. Surely 
miles of grass need promise nothing more than 
itself. Certainly it conveyed no sense of wait- 
ing for its function as it tossed and shone in 
the September sun. 

No hint of decay lay in its coloring. For as 
its summer green passed away the coral tints 
at its roots would creep upward. All through 



A STEPDAUGHTER OF THE PRAIRIE 277 

the coming winter it would lie there rosy and 
rich, gleaming pink through the light, wind- 
tossed snow or glowing warmly under our clear 
western sun. It would never have a moment of 
real deadness until its green appeared again in 
the early spring. And yet even this winter 
coloring would have a kind of austerity. Tropi- 
cal richness was never suggested by even the 
deepest or thickest-growing grasses. Self-con- 
trol was the note of the prairie, freedom which 
stopped short of wildness and richness short 
of luxuriance. Both the modified rose of win- 
ter and the green of summer had a reserve, a 
limit of expressiveness, which subtly stirred 
and invited the imagination. One could think 
much on the prairie. 

The quiet was a part of the prairie mood. 
Like its emptiness, its silence was a definite 
thing. The quiet of the forest is a sort of hush, 
a conscious interdiction of sound. There is a 
kind of secrecy about it — a finger on lips. But 
the silence of the prairie is a frank, open thing. 
Out under the sky and the sun, with vision un- 
restricted, one may speak if he chooses, but in 
perfect content he refrains. The emptiness 



278 A STEPDAUGHTER OF THE PRAIRIE 

and quiet have their own form of companion- 
ship. Even I felt it, as Pete carried me along 
toward the horizon and the sun. 

We got out of the range of the cornfields and 
the road at last. Wherever I looked there was 
only grass. Grasses touched the sky-line all 
around. As on that other day which now came 
back to me vividly, there was nothing apparent 
but the sky and the grass and the sun and me. 
I seemed to be lifted almost to the level of the 
other elements by being allowed association 
with them. And yet I felt a sort of vast humil- 
ity, too, a kind of gratitude for belonging to 
the place. I brought Pete Giafar to a pause 
while I tasted this consciousness for a moment. 
It had a degree of novelty. For in all my suc- 
cessive moments of delight in the prairie be- 
fore I had never committed myself to com- 
plete satisfaction in it. It had never possessed 
me. 

I slipped off the pony to get my feet into the 
grass. It seemed more definitely related to me, 
with its soft roots underfoot and its tops brush- 
ing my skirts. Pete welcomed this opportunity 
to supplement his noon meal, and nibbled along 



A STEPDAUGHTER OF THE PRAIRIE 279 

behind me, tugging at the end of his bridle 
reins. Mooning along thus, I did not at first 
notice that my path was going to angle across 
that of two horsemen who were also riding at 
large. A mere glance showed that one was a 
native and one was not. Their horsemanship 
alone told me that the East and the West had 
met. One cantered easily, subordinate to the 
movement of his horse; for the other riding 
was merely a series of meetings and partings 
with his saddle. I could easily imagine what 
mingled indignation and mirth his technique 
had inspired in every man who had seen him. 
that day. 

He turned a cool look upon me as they ap- 
proached, the look of one to whom a meet- 
ing with a stranger is nothing; the other man 
drew in his horse a little as he called solicit- 
ously, 

"You ain't lost, are you, miss! " 

I answered, "No, sir," and pointed with my 
whip toward the road. I noted at the same 
time his saying "miss"; until very recent times 
I had been "sissy." This seemed to be a very 
nice man. 



280 A STEPDAUGHTER OF THE PRAIRIE 

They went on talking and pointing, and as 
my path drew away from theirs I heard, above 
the soft footfalls of our horses, such phrases 
as "the section line runs," "the corner-stone 
ought to lie," and "begin to break up." 

The meaning of their inspection flashed 
across me. This was one of those "eastern 
owners" of whom we were always hearing, 
mysterious, erratic, unappreciative persons, 
who held land not for homes, but for specula- 
tion. They were held half in awe, half in con- 
tempt, by the neighbors of their land. 

This section was evidently, as my father had 
said, to be broken up at once. A man who 
couldn't ride — according to our standards — 
and who didn't know people, had the authority 
to take away the prairie. Soon long brown 
lines would divide its wonderful surface into 
parallel sections, and the lines would broaden 
and the sections narrow until there was noth- 
ing of them left. And next year an uneven, 
undersized, yellowish crop of sod-corn would 
take the place of this full, rich, pleasant 
growth. The grass under my feet would never 
reach its promised winter rosiness and would 



A STEPDAUGHTER OF THE PRAIRIE 281 

never turn again into its rare spring green. 
And no other would ever come to take its place. 
The prairie could never be reinstated in any de- 
gree. I did not know that then, but to child- 
hood everything that happens looks irrevoca- 
ble. One has a completer conception of eternity 
then than he ever has afterward. I knew fully 
that this was the last time I should ever stand 
alone on the prairie, with only grass and sky 
and sun filling my eyes. 

I walked on for a long time with a feeling 
that I was doing a sort of rite, making a con- 
scious farewell. At twelve any sort of con- 
scious feeling — unless it involves real discom- 
fort — has a precipitate of pleasure. There was 
a kind of worth in my feeling now which raised 
it almost to the level of great emotion. Any- 
way, I had found that the prairie, too, had ro- 
mance — and that romance was about to pass 
away. It had been there all the time and I had 
not seen it. I mounted Pete and rode slowly 
back with the wind to the place where my fa- 
ther would expect to find me on his return. It 
was a sober little girl that greeted them all ? 
They thought that I was tired of waiting and 



282 A STEPDAUGHTER OF THE PRAIRIE 

that I had been lonesome. Mrs. Harris com- 
miserated me plaintively. My father smiled 
quietly at me, though. He knew that one was 
not lonely on the prairie. 



THE END 



T 



HE following pages contain advertise- 
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SANDY 

By S. R. CROCKETT 
Author or. "Patsy," "The Stickit Minister," etc. 

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Frontispiece in colors by George Harper. Decorated cover. $1.35 net. 

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"As winning, as genuine an idyl of love, of mutual trust and happi- 
ness, of but a single united aim in life as one can desire. American to 
the core; picturesque, wholesome, romantic, practical." — N. Y. Tribune. 

"Unlike any book of his we have met before . . . extremely 
pleasant and genial . . . holds the reader's attention to the end." 
—N. Y. Sun. 

"A fine, worthy book, indeed; too popular, perhaps, but the finest 
Mr. London has done." — Michigan Churchman. 

"Jack London's good story. ... A delightful picture of Cali- 
fornia life . . . such a lovable pair. . . . The story is an excel- 
lent one for grouchy persons. It ought to cure them." — Brooklyn Eagle, 



Short Stories 

By JACK LONDON 

Cloth, i2mo. 
This volume representing the maturer work of Mr. London has 
that compelling style, that skill in character portrayal and in the con- 
struction of unusual plot which since he first began to write fiction 
have always marked him apart from the rank and file of novelists. No 
writer to-day is more praised than Mr. London for the color of his stories, 
for the fertility of his imagination, for the strength of his prose, for tfee 
way in which he makes his people live. His versatility, for he can turn 
out a bit of grim tragedy or a tale brimming with humor with equal 
facility, makes him everybody's author. The present book is a col- 
lection of particularly human stories based on a variety of emotions 
and worked out with consummate mastery of his art. 



THE MACMILLAN COMPANY 

Publishers 64-66 Fifth Avenue New York 



NEW MACMILLAN FICTION 



The Reconnaissance 



By GORDON GARDINER 

With frontispiece in colors by George Harper. Cloth, i2mo, 
$1.35 net. 



Unusual both in thought and in character is this briskly 
moving story of adventure in which a young man ultimately 
finds himself. The action is vigorous and the tale of the 
youth's endeavors to overcome certain deep-rooted traits in 
his nature appealing. The novel is distinguished by the 
vivacity and crispness of the author's style. For the most part 
Mr. Gardiner reveals his theme and portrays his people 
through dialogue, thus imbuing his book with a liveliness 
and an alertness which the reader will find most pleasant. 
Opening on the veldt in Africa with a situation of striking 
power and originality, the scene, in the course of the plot, 
shifts to other lands, bringing in a variety of well-drawn and 
interesting men and women. Like A. E. W. Mason's "The 
Four Feathers," to which it bears a slight resemblance, "The 
Reconnaissance" is a story of courage, raising in perplexing 
fashion the question as to whether the winner of the Victoria 
Cross is a hero or a coward, and answering it in a way likely 
to be satisfactory to all. 

THE MACMILLAN COMPANY 

Publishers 64-66 Fifth Avenue New York 



NEW MACMILLAN FICTION 

The Treasure 

By KATHLEEN NORRIS 
Author of "Mother," "The Rich Mrs. Burgoyne," etc. 

With illustrations. Decorated cloth, i2mo. $1.00 net. 

Stories of the home circle Mrs. Norris has made peculiarly her own. 
Whether the scene be laid in the parlor or the kitchen, whether the char- 
acter be mistress or maid, she writes with an understanding and sympathy 
which compel admiration. In the present novel Mrs. Norris chronicles 
the experiences of one family in trying to solve the servant problem! 
What they do, with the results, not only provide reading that is amusing 
but will be found by many who look beneath the surface, highly sug- 
gestive and significant. As in all of Mrs. Norris's work, the atmosphere 
of the home has been wonderfully caught; throughout are those intimate 
little touches which make the incidents described seem almost a part of 
the reader's own life, so close to reality, so near to the everyday hap- 
penings of everybody does Mrs. Norris bring them. 



Gr; 



annie 

By MRS. GEORGE WEMYSS 

Cloth i2mo. $1.35 net. 

Delightful in its characterization and redolent with fragrant 
charm Grannie stands apart from all other recent novels. As a 
truly beautiful picture of home-life, of the sweetnes's and sig- 
nificance of age, of the sympathies and understanding between the 
older generation and the younger, Mrs. Wemyss' new novel will 
appeal to all readers who hold the word "Grannie" sacred with 
their childhood and its memories. 

"The picture it gives is sweet and wholesome, and most 
pleasing." — N. Y. Times. 

"... A charming story of an old lady and her happy 
family of grandchildren." — Boston Globe. 



THE MACMILLAN COMPANY 

Publishers 64-66 Fifth Avenue New York 



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